. Gleanings in bee culture . hive,and the bees cleaned the eggs all out in afew days. I had another and more remarkable casein a very strong colony, and the queen inthis case was also young. I am in the habitof looking at all colonies once a week, tillthey are ready for supers. One week thiscolony was marked as very strong, with fivecombs of brood. I expected to find it readyfor a su]jer the next week: but it had notaltered, except that the brood looked a littlepatchy. I did not pay much attention: butthe next time, I found that there was broodin five frames still; but scattered all overwere e
. Gleanings in bee culture . hive,and the bees cleaned the eggs all out in afew days. I had another and more remarkable casein a very strong colony, and the queen inthis case was also young. I am in the habitof looking at all colonies once a week, tillthey are ready for supers. One week thiscolony was marked as very strong, with fivecombs of brood. I expected to find it readyfor a su]jer the next week: but it had notaltered, except that the brood looked a littlepatchy. I did not pay much attention: butthe next time, I found that there was broodin five frames still; but scattered all overwere empty cells, eggs, sealed and unsealedbrood, in no particular order. Beyond doubtthe greater number of eggs had failed tohatch. I think this case proves that Dr. Mil-ler, p. 418, is correct. If a (pieen often laidunhatchable eggs, the appearance of thebrood-combs would be more or less patchy.(I have emi)loyed the clumsy word un-hatchable to distinguish from drone eggs,which are sometimes styled infertile.) If Nov. 1. UtU 661. any thing like25 i)er cent ofthe eggs shouldfail to mature,as Mr. \Vesle>-F o s t e r s u g -gests, the ap-pearance of thecomb woukl bevery patchy in-deed, unlessone assu niesthat the work-ers immediate-ly remove theseeggs and thec|ueen rei)lacesthem. I havealways thoughtthat p a t c h ybrood -combsindicate a poorqueen. Last season,page 5S-1, , 1910, I de-scribed a meth-od of swarmpreventionwhich I havesuccessfu11 ytried this put, itconsists in con-fining the queen to an upper story for tendays by means of an excluder. In one caseI accidentally shut the queen into a shal-low super almost full of honey. When Ifound her a week later she had a little patchof brood and eggs in one or two combs. Iput her below the excluder, and this was oneof the very few strong colonies that madeno attempt to swarm. I had a great many supersedure swarmsthis year. From my own experience, andfrom conversations with other bee-keepers,I am convinced that thes
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbees, bookyear1874
