_Murfreesboro, Penna._, Oct. 6, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
The Queen Nursery.
Under the above heading, Mr. Gallup, in the Journal for October, gives
his experience with the queen nursery, which, with him, appears to be a
perfect success. I wish to give my experience, and ask Mr. Gallup and
others why it is so different from his.
I made fifty cages 1½ × 1¾ × 1¾ inches, four sides of very thin wood,
and one side covered with wire gauze, and the other with a piece of
glass slipped in grooves in the two wooden sides, so as to be moved up
or down for a door. In each of these cages I placed a piece of honey in
comb (unsealed), with the cells in natural position; and then placed the
cages in frames, on slots inserted across them, so as to hold three
tiers of six each, or eighteen to a frame. I then took out two centre
frames from good, strong hives, and put one of these frames containing
cages in their place. Some very strong colonies, some were medium. To
some I gave upward ventilation, by leaving off the honey boxes and
raising the cap. On others I left the honey boxes. I then awaited the
result. Some queens hatched in fourteen days from starting the cell;
some in sixteen days; two or three in twenty-four days; and some _never_
hatched.
Many of the young queens died in the cages in from twelve to twenty-four
hours after hatching; very few lived to be five days old--the time given
by many writers for them to mate with the drones; only six or seven out
of about one hundred lived two weeks. The queens, when first hatched,
were put in fertilizing cages such as described by N. C. Mitchell, but
_never_ were fertilized.
Now Mr. Editor, will Mr. Gallup or some one else tell me why my
experience differs so widely from that of Mr. G.?
Sister cells, cut from the same comb as some of those that were put in
the cages, hatched in from fourteen to sixteen days, were duly
fertilized, and are now alive and well. Hence it could not be any defect
in the stocks they were raised from. In some of the cages, I put two or
three workers, to feed the young queens; but still the latter would die,
and leave the workers to eat the honey left in the cages.
If queens require any other food than honey, why did not the bees give
it to them through the wire gauze on which they clustered in great
numbers? Some of the cages were put in colonies that had fertile queens
at liberty, but most of them were put in queenless hives.
The cells were mostly put in on the ninth day from starting the cell.
I shall be pleased to see replies to this in the next number of AMERICAN
BEE JOURNAL.