Bee Keeping for Profit. A New System of Bee Management (1891) / Third Edition.

IN commencing to rear queens, you will first want some small rearing boxes, or miniature hives, about four and one-half inches wide, by eight inches long, and five inches deep, inside measurement. Use inch board for the hives. Make for each hive three moveable comb frames,[6] suspended the same as in the brood section of the Controllable Hive. Make the under side of the top bar flat, instead of triangular, as in the large comb frames. Take a piece of old comb, and cut to fill each one of the small frames. Take from a pint to a quart of bees in a populous stock (in the height of the breeding season this will do harm) without the queen. Confine the bees in a light box, in the top of which there is an inch hole, closed to confine them to the box, for if not confined they would return to the old stock, as the queen is not with them. Having secured your bees in the box, go to a stock and lift out a comb containing eggs, just deposited. They may be known by their appearance. They are but a tiny speck at the bottom of the cell, about one-sixteenth of an inch In length, slightly curved and perfectly white in color. They remain in this form two or three days, at the end of which time they change to the form of a grub or maggot. After this change it is a risk to depend on them for queen raising, so be sure to secure for your purpose eggs. Cut from the brood comb a piece about two inches long and one-half inch wide, using a very sharp, thin knife, so as not to mutilate the comb. Cut out a piece from the center comb of the miniature hive, and fit in its place the piece containing the eggs. The middle of a warm day is the best time to do this work. It is best to have one of the comb frames of the miniature hives filled with honey, to furnish food for the bees for a few days.

As soon as you have fitted the piece containing the eggs in its place in the miniature hive, put on a close-fitting cover. Do not nail it as you will want to look at it every few days. Close the entrances to the miniature hive, so no bees can escape. Now open the hole in the top of the box in which the bees are confined, and set the miniature hive containing the eggs over it quickly, allowing no bees to escape. The bees will then pass from the box up into the miniature hive, cluster on the comb containing the eggs, and immediately commence the rearing of queens from the eggs thus furnished them. Keep the bees confined to the miniature hive for about thirty-six hours, Give them their liberty at first about one hour before sunset. If you do not confine them for the time stated, they will return to the hive from which you took them, but if so confined, they will forget their old home, and adhere to the miniature hive, the same as an ordinary swarm hived in the usual way. They will rear queens from the eggs given them by constructing queen cells, so arranged as to take in one of the eggs in the piece of comb furnished them often constructing three or more cells. In about six days, open the miniature hive, and you will find these cells nearly or quite finished. Occasionally a case occurs where they do not rear queens when thus furnished with the means, but such cases are rare. If you find each one made separate you can, if you choose, with a sharp, thin knife, cut out all the cells but one, and give them to other rearing boxes not supplied with eggs, or which have failed to rear queens from the eggs furnished them. If you leave all the cells in the miniature hive as constructed, the first queen that hatches will destroy all the others. She will visit each cell, gnaw an opening in the side, curve her abdomen and insert her sting into the opening, and sting the rival queen to death while yet in her cradle. The worker bees will then enlarge the opening, and drag out the lifeless body. The victorious queen now reigns over the little colony, the same as in a large and natural swarm.

In from three to five days after hatching if the weather is fine, the young queen will leave the miniature hive, and take a flight in the open air, to meet the drone for the purpose of fecundation. If successful, she will commence to lay in about two days. She may then be introduced to a full stock at any time desired. Recollect it will be useless to rear queens where there are no drones.

When stocks are liberally fed early in the season, drones will appear correspondingly early. And if from a stock well supplied with drones, you remove the queen, the workers will not destroy the drones in that hive until they have obtained another fertile laying queen. With this idea in view, viz:—early and liberal feeding to produce drones early, and depriving a popular stock (well supplied with drones) of its queen the last of the season, we can have drones sufficient for our purpose from early spring until late in the fall.

I have in several instances, for the purpose of securing drones very early in the spring, deprived a populous stock, containing a large number of drones, of its queen, very late in the fall, and wintered them queenless. In this manner the drones were permitted by the bees to remain and winter with the swarm. Early in the spring they were re-enforced with hatching brood from popular stocks, but were permitted to rear no queens, in order that the drones might be preserved. As soon as drones appeared in the other stocks, this stock was furnished with a laying queen and it was as prosperous as the best.

By this plan drones may be kept through the winter, if their services are required very early in the spring, before we can raise them from the best stocks by judicious feeding, which very rarely can be done. The bees for rearing queens are usually obtained from populous hives, such as will hardly miss a pint or quart from their numbers, great care being exercised not to remove the queen. The best time to get the bees is in the middle of the day. Go to a stock and first find the queen. Set the comb she is on to one side. Put your light box (prepared as before described with a hole in the top) on a sheet near by, with one edge raised an inch. Take one or more combs from the hive (being careful not to get the one with the queen,) and shake the bees from them down beside the box, which they will readily enter. When you have bees enough in the box, close it so none can escape. You now have the bees ready to put in the miniature hive, as before directed.

I think I have given such instruction as will enable any one, after a little practice, to rear queens successfully.[7] I will follow it with such information as will insure success in introducing queens into full stocks of bees.

Here let me caution bee keepers never to attempt to introduce a queen into a full stock of bees, until she has begun to lay. A young queen, not fecundated, will be destroyed in nine cases out of ten, in spite of every precaution. Before introducing a queen, the old queen in the stock, if any exists, must be taken away. Make your search for her in the middle of the day, as at that time most of the workers are away. Use but very little smoke, and that only at the entrance, as the bees should remain spread over the combs as evenly as possible. If you use much smoke, they will rush to the bottom and the corners of the hive, and it is very likely the queen might seek a hiding-place with the others, where you could not find her. If not disturbed, the queen will be found in the comb among the bees. When ready to proceed, having smoked them lightly at the entrances, (a puff at each entrance is sufficient,) lift out the comb carefully, avoiding any jar, and look them over for the queen. It is said the Italian queens are more readily found than the natives, but I could never see any difference. Hold the frame up in front of your face, so as to have a good view, and look each comb over carefully, till you find the queen. When found remove her. Always return the combs so they will occupy the same position as before.

As soon as the queen is removed, and the bees are aware of their loss, they will usually commence to rear another queen from the worker eggs to take her place. To make a sure thing of it, they often start to produce a half dozen or more.

In six days after removing the queen, smoke the bees well, to get the combs as clear of them as possible. Do this in the middle of the day. When you have driven the most of the bees from the comb to the bottom and into the corners of the hive, lift out the combs, and look sharply for queen cells, (success depends on thorough work here.) With a sharp knife cut out and destroy every such cell that is finished or commenced. Don't leave any part of a queen cell in the hive, for the bees will not accept a strange queen if they have the means of raising one of their own. Having destroyed every queen cell, finished or unfinished, return the combs to the hive; but before putting the honey board over the brood section, cut a hole in it a little smaller than the top of a tumbler. Cover this hole with a light piece of board, simply laid on, (not nailed, for you will need to remove it without ajar.) Then put the honey board in its place over the brood section.

Let the hive remain until near sunset, for the bees to get quiet, and to learn that they are without a queen and without the means of rearing another. Just before sunset take the queen you propose to introduce, and with her a score or more of workers, and put them in a tumbler with a piece of wire cloth over the top to keep them in. (To get her from the miniature hive, where she was reared, to the tumbler, take it to a close room, before a window, so if she takes wing, she may alight there.) Go to the hive into which she is to be introduced, and remove the cap, avoiding any jar that may irritate the bees. Take off the board over the hole in the honey board and turn the tumbler containing the queen bottom up over it, keeping the wire cloth between the queen in the tumbler and the bees in the hive.

Replace the cap to the hive, and let the queen and her attendant bees remain in the tumbler, in communication with the bees in the hive through the wire cloth, until the next day, near sunset. Then take a teaspoonful of honey, go to the hive, and remove the cap, this time with the greatest possible care, as the slightest jar will endanger success. Raise the tumbler carefully from off the queen, and with the honey smear her completely over, then turn the wire cloth over carefully, and let the queen and her attendant bees down through the hole in the honey board, among the bees of the hive. Replace the cap as quietly as possible, and the work is done. In about one week examine the combs of this hive for eggs, and if they are found, you can consider your work crowned with success. If no eggs are discovered, you must go over the ground again. But be sure there are no eggs in the combs before you repeat the work.

This plan of introducing queens, is the most successful of any I have ever tested. It rarely fails. When a laying queen is removed from one of the miniature hives, the bees will usually rear queens from the eggs left when the queen is removed.