_Hamilton, Ills._, July 24, 1870.
* * * * *
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Artificial Queens.
In the July No. of the Journal. Mr. John M. Price contributed an article
on “Natural, Hardy and Prolific Queens,” which was no doubt his
conviction of the truth of the matter at the time; but as it does not
agree with my experience, I will give the other side of the question.
If I understand his theory, it is that queens reared in stocks deprived
of their queen when not under the “swarming impulse,” are smaller, less
prolific and shorter lived than what are termed _natural queens_. I am
fully aware that Mr. Price does not stand alone on said theory, and yet
I believe it to be an error.
For the sake of distinguishing, we will state that queens bred in full
stocks from which the mother queen led forth a swarm, or queens which
were _started_ while the old queen remained in the hive, are _natural_
queens, and all others _artificial_. I have both kinds in my apiary, and
have had for several years, and can see no difference in their size,
beauty, fertility or longevity. I have repeatedly kept artificial queens
until they were three years old, and had one very prolific queen which
died in March last, being then three years and nine months old. I left
her as an experiment, to see what age she would attain; but my practice
is to remove queens in their second or third year. Of course a few die
before they are two years old, for they are not exempt from the ills
that bee “flesh is heir to.” But that four or five in succession should
pass off the stage of action in a single stock in one season, is
something before unheard of. I do not know what effect brother P.’s
revolvable, reversible, double-cased hive _might_ have upon the tender
life of a young queen; but it seems to have been most disastrous, for we
have no such work here in the old Keystone State.
It is a matter of very great importance in the success of an apiary,
that our stocks are supplied with the _right kind_ of queens, and in
order to effect this desirable result, something more is necessary to a
full understanding of the subject, than simply to know that bees, when
deprived of their queen, will attempt to supply her place. I find little
difficulty in rearing _fine_ queens, with the following conditions: 1st.
a suitable queen mother; 2d. fair weather and good pasturage; 3d. a full
stock, in which honey and pollen are abundant (not a nucleus where
starvation stares them in the face). It is a settled point with me, that
the production of queens is a matter wholly under the control of the
worker bees; and we lack evidence that a queen _ever_ lays an egg in a
royal cell. If the bee is guided by instinct _alone_, and the production
of a queen depended on the depositing of a _peculiar_ egg by the queen
in a royal cell (an egg, differing from the worker or drone eggs), it
would follow that, on the loss or removal of the queen when no such eggs
existed in the hive, no young queens could be produced.
Small queens may be produced in nuclei where the requisite food is
limited, and where from want of bees the larva is exposed to repeated
changes of temperature, which is detrimental. When reared in full stocks
in times of great scarcity, nearly the same results follow.
There is another important point, namely the _proper age_ for the mother
bee. In breeding all our domestic animals, regard is always had (and
wisely we think) to the age of the parents. It may be thought that the
life of the bee is so short that it would allow but little latitude in
this direction; but it should not be forgotten that the queen usually
lives three and sometimes four years, during which time there is
doubtless a period of fertility and hardiness, or power of endurance,
not common to the whole of her life. Just what that period is, I am not
prepared to say; but the rapid advancement of apiarian science will
doubtless solve the problem. I am satisfied, however, that queens bred
from _young_ queens are not equal, in several desirable points, to those
bred from mothers a year old. In experimenting with black bees, I became
satisfied on this point several years ago. I have never known a _young_
black queen, after becoming fertile, to lead out a swarm, no matter how
populous the stock might be; and indeed apiarians have considered it the
best method of preventing swarming, in order to secure surplus honey, to
remove the old queen and install one of the current year. (It is ahead
of Quinby’s queen yard). We reason from this, that their instinct
teaches them that they are _unfit_ for queen mothers. This would not,
perhaps, hold good in the high temperature of southern latitudes, which
tends to the earlier maturity of all animal life. With the Italian bees
it is somewhat different, for young queens produce drone eggs, and they
do sometimes lead out swarms, yet they are not so liable to do so as
older queens.
Mr. Aaron Benedict tells us he produced six generations of queens in a
single season, but does not give us the result, further than that he
thought he improved his bees in color.
I am not surprised that the men who raise queens from March to October,
have cheap queens and sell them by the hundred. But I am one to say that
no genuine lover of our pets who duly considers consequences, would
proceed thus. And now, Mr. Editor, I wish to say in conclusion, that of
my 125 queens about one-fourth are _natural_ and the balance artificial
queens, and if Mr. Price, or “any other man” will, upon examination,
decide correctly, by size or fertility (amount of brood), which are of
the former and which of the latter class, he may pick out ten as large
and yellow queens as he _ever saw_, and I will make him a present of the
same, and will warrant that, if artificial, they shall be as productive
as he wishes them.
NB.--I have no cheap queens for sale.