The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry: short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into ItalianHermann, H. C. (Heinrich C.)
Science
The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry: short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into Italian
Hermann, H. C. (Heinrich C.)
Bee culture; Bees
[Footnote 4: You must endeavour to insert the queen-cells in the
middle of a comb, where the most of the bees gather; it is done best
by cutting a diamond-shaped piece out of the comb, and then, loosely
inserting the queen-cell cut to a similar shape. If it were inserted
in the lower edge, the bees could not cover it on the approach of cold
weather, and the cell would become cold and the bee perish.]
The same is done with the queen-cells of No. 2, and so on. Care must
be exercised to be well supplied with all the different stages, from
the egg to the queen, so that there are always ready ripe and half-ripe
cells, impregnated and unimpregnated queens in all stages.
If now, a queen has crept out, you must wait until she is impregnated,
and has well supplied the box with brood, then take away the queen,
and put in from another hive a ripe queen-cell; where the queen-cell
has been taken from, a few brood-combs must be inserted, so that
no interruption takes place. If a queen, taken away, can always be
replaced by a ripe queen-cell, fifteen queens may be produced from
one breeding-box during one summer. Care must be taken that there is
always young brood in a queen-breeding-box, so that in case a queen or
queen-cell should meet with an accident, the bees have a substitute,
and no interruption can occur.
The brood is necessary to the bees and makes them industrious.
Therefore, never take a queen from her people until she has well
supplied them with eggs and brood.
Frequent inspection is very necessary, for sometimes everything may be
thought to be quite in order, and yet a hive has, instead of a queen,
_only working_ bees, who, through a longer deprivation of their queen
have themselves commenced to lay eggs but out of which only drones are
produced, to the great disappointment of the cultivator. This disorder
can soon be observed, for the bees lay _many_ eggs and without order in
_one_ cell, while the queen lays only _one_, never more than two in one
cell.
Such a hive, where the bees have commenced laying eggs, may also be
known by blowing into it, when the bees will hum quite hollow, while in
a hive with a queen, the humming is quite lively and cheerful.
If not too far gone, the hive may be brought round by inserting a comb
of healthy brood with the adhering young bees; but if it has gone too
far, it must be united with a healthy hive, else all trouble is lost.
Introduced queens are killed by such demoralised people.
§ 11.
RESERVING OF QUEEN-CELLS.
Often it will happen that there are more queen-cells than can be used
at the moment, for they must not be let lying about long, else they
will become cold; and generally the brood must be protected from cold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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