ers you are doing so to save foundation. Use half an inch-don't waste your foundation by putting in two inches. Casanova, Cuba.

SUPERSEDING OUR OLD QUEENS.

Do Not Let the Bees Decide as to the Time for Doing This; a Novel Plan for Indicating the Age of Queen.

BY E. W. ALEXANDER.

To supersede our queens when two years old, or to leave it for the bees to attend to, is a question of far more importance than many realize, and one upon which I very decidedly differ with some of our best beekeepers. Last fall we had 107 queens in our apiary that were 21 years old. Therefore for many years we have superseded all our queens at 2 years of age; but as a part of these queens were some we had bought, and were of an extra good strain, their hives being well filled with honey, and as some writers on the subject had claimed that the bees knew better than we when to supersede their queens, I thought I would test this matter thoroughly on a large scale, even if it cost me the 107 colonies to do so.

THE RESULT OF THE EXPERIMENT.

We put our bees in the cellar about the middle of November. These colonies, with their queens 21 years old, were put in with the other colonies here and there all through the lot, and had exactly the same chance as those with younger queens. When we took them from the cellar about the middle of April we found only eleven that had superseded their queens; and it had been done so late in the fall that 6 were drone-layers, and the other 5 were about as weak in bees as those with the old queen; and of the remaining 96, 3 were fairly good, 26 were very weak in bees, and the other 67 were dead.

In looking over our bees about Sept. 1 we noticed that these old queens had all stopped laying, and had but little brood compared with the young queens. This fact, undoubtedly, had much to do with the weak condition of the few that survived the winter.

Of the other 603 colonies in the same cellar, that had queens 6 months old and 1 years old, only 7 were lost.

Now, my friends, can any of you say that it does not pay to keep track of the age of your queens, and attend to superseding them yourself? I am sure it has always paid me well, heretofore, to do so, and I do hope that this costly experiment that I have just made will save many of you from a like experience. As I have written before, it is so easy to get the best of young queens now that have been reared from extra good honeygathering strains that we have no excuse whatever for keeping old inferior queens in our apiary; and I want to ask those of you who advocate letting their bees do their own superseding if it would not have been much better for me to supersede those 107 queens last summer, at an expense of about $65,

than to lose at least $400 worth of bees in leaving it for the bees themselves to attend to.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE AGE AND QUALITY OF THE QUEENS.

In the August issue of the Review, 1904, is published an article I wrote on keeping track of the age and quality of our queens, which is well worth more than a year's subscription to some of you who take that paper; and for the benefit of those who take GLEANINGS only I will copy a part of said article:

"As we run all our bees now for extracted honey I will not take up any of the thousand and one different ways of producing comb honey. That is a trade of itself; neither will I enter into the many different ways of rearing choice queens, except what I have said in the above; but there is one thing which I wish to call your attention to, and that is this: Not one bee-keeper in 50 can tell me, as we walk through his apiary, the age and quality of every queen in the yard. This is one of the most essential things to know at all times if you expect to make a success of the business; and I have often wondered why some one has not given us a good practical way of knowing this before now. I used a book for this purpose, but often found it quite inconvenient to look over 200 or 300 pages to find what I wanted to know at a glance; so I adopted the following, which is very accurate, and tells me at once all I wish to know about the age and quality of every queen I have.

"TIN TAGS FOR SHOWING AGE AND QUALITY OF QUEENS.

"Something like 30 years ago I cut out a lot of pieces of tin some round, some half round, and some square, about one inch in diameter; and whenever I find a young queen commencing to lay I put one of these tags on the front of the hive on the left-hand corner, about two inches from the bottom. It is put on with a carpet-tack through the center, and is easily taken off with my knife; and it follows that queen to every hive she is ever put into. If she proves to be a choice queen the tag is put a few inches higher up on the corner of the hive; and if very choice, still higher. If she is inferior in any way it is put over toward the middle of the hive; if very poor it is put clear over to the other side. I use only one shape of tag each summer, with all the queens of that summer's rearing. The next summer I use another shape, perhaps round or square; then when I walk through the apiary I can tell at a glance the age and quality of every queen in the yard; and then when I have surplus queens on hand I can go right to the hives that contain my poorest queens and supersede them at once without having to open any hive unnecessarily. You see I can tell at any time. I see by the fronts of the hives just how many queens I have of a certain age, also their quality. If you will adopt this way of keeping track of your queens you will soon weed out the poor ones,

There, friends, I almost beg of you to take my advice in this matter, and adopt some simple method whereby you can tell at a glance the age and quality of every queen in your apiary. It is not only a source of much satisfaction to know the real merit of all your queens when working among them, but I assure you it is also, from a dollar point of view, one of much importance.

In regard to the proper time to supersede, I must differ with those who recommend superseding in the fall. My principal reason for doing so is this: If the queen to be superseded (as is generally the case) is old, and beginning to fail in keeping her hive well filled with brood, then you stand a big chance of having a weak colony the following spring unless you give them a young queen before August 1. In this section even our young queens lay but little after Sept. 1, and certainly we should have a good prolific queen in every hive at least one month before the breeding season closes. But if you are superseding good queens that have kept their hives well filled with brood to the end of the season (simply to get a better strain of bees) then you can supersede your queens almost any time during the fall; otherwise I should very decidedly prefer superseding all my queens early in the season.

Now, my friends, think this matter over well; and in doing so remember that your next year's surplus depends to a great extent on the quality of the queens you have in your hives this coming fall. The man who is careless in this matter will have many disappointments that he might otherwise avoid with but little trouble and expense.

Now a few words to those who ask me many questions by letter. If you will send your questions to GLEANINGS or the Review I will try to answer them through those papers. During the last month I have answered one question in 63 different letters, and I certainly have not time to write the same thing over and over so often.

Delanson, N. Y.

[Mr. A. E. Manum, a well-known contributor to these columns some ten years ago, and who, at the time at least, was operating a series of outyards of some six hundred colonies, I think, stated most emphatically that he could not afford to keep a queen after she was two years old. Some disagreed with him at the time; but I think a majority of the practical honey-producers supported his contention.

The experiment recorded by our correspondent with 107 colonies is very interesting and valuable. What has cost him several hundred dollars is placed before our readers at the mere mere cost of reading, plus one twenty-fourth of a year's subscription. And, by the way, there are hundreds of good things in all the bee-papers. I think it was Mr. W. L. Coggshall, another beekeeper whose colonies run up into the hundreds, said that he could not afford, busy as

he was, to fail to go over carefully all the bee-journals, for he says he is constantly getting new ideas that mean to him dollars and dollars. This article alone, if carefully read, will be worth, perhaps, hundreds of dollars to other bee-keepers.

Very lately in these columns one or two writers have urged that, in their own practice, they supersede once every year, claiming that a queen six months or a year old would give results that a queen two years old would not; that any thing over two years old was never to be considered except as a breeder. - ED.]

PRIZE-WINNERS FOR THIS ISSUE. Professional Men in the Ranks of Bee-keepers. BY E. R. ROOT.

Mr. Charles G. Macklin, of Morrison, Ill., was the winner of the second prize for the view of the bee-yard here shown, in the late photo contest. He is one of the very numerous examples of professional men who have taken up bee-keeping as a side linenot alone for the money there may be in it, but primarily for the pleasure and recreation after business hours. He is an insurance agent by occupation, but has been keeping bees for three years, and now has an apiary of something like 100 colonies - a corner section of which appears in the accompanying photo-the winner of the second prize. It appears to be the back yard of an ordinary town or city lot. The grass is kept down with a lawn-mower, and ornamental shrubbery as well as fruit-trees are conveniently located for shade to the hives.

At the time of submitting the photo Mr. Macklin gave us no particulars; but in the absence of any statement I assume that "a better half" is the sharer in the recreation and pleasure afforded by the bees. Perhaps it is she who sits in the delightful shade of the tree where she can watch the busy workers bringing in what they suppose to be their own stores of mellifluous sweetness, but which in reality they are to share with her.

Where the rest of the hundred hives are located may be guessed. They may be in the two long rows diverging at right angles.

The addition of professional men to our ranks is and should be welcomed by the bread-and-butter bee-keeper, the one who keeps bees solely for the living he can get out of them, for it is these men of affairs, learning, and finance, with their political pull and influence who are able to get for us needed legislation to protect our interests. It is these men who are able to go before the big newspapers and magazines and secure denials of comb-honey lies. It is these men who add dignity and power to our conventions, and who enliven our bee-lore, not so much by their practical experience as by their enthusiasm that gives a new tone and life to the ordinary humdrum of bread-andbutter getting.

THE SECOND PRIZE, SWARM OF BEES. The winner of the second prize for a swarm of bees is Mr. W. C. Naftel, of Naftel, Ala. I understand from the committee that the feature which gave this second place, or perhaps any place at all, was the Manum swarming-basket. The bees, it appears, have been dumped inside of the basket, the cover flipped in place, when the remaining bees that were not captured inside, but which may have taken wing, later clustered on the outside.

The Manum swarming arrangement does not require that all the bees should be secured inside of the wire-cloth cage. A half or two-thirds will be sufficient. If the cover is folded over in place, and the basket be poised in midair on its tripod, the remaining bees in the air will soon find the main cluster and cling to the outside. When all are in place the tripod is lifted, the two legs

THE HOUSE-APIARY IN CUBA. Some of its Advantages and Disadvantages in that Climate.

BY F. H. DE BECHE.

I send you herewith four pictures. They are not intended to compete for the GLEANINGS prize pictures, but I am sure you will be interested in looking at them.

The largest picture shows my home yard at Taco-Taco. It is located at the top of a small hill on the edge of the village, and you can see the roofs of its houses and the mountains in the background. The village of Taco-Taco is built in the lowest center part of that valley, on both sides of the Western Railway tracks which cross it. This general view of the apiary was taken about two and a half years ago. Some sticks

are pulled up against the main pole, the whole then balanced for easy carrying. On arriving at the hive the basket is slowly inverted by grasping the ring in the bottom of the cone of wire cloth. A quick jerk dislodges the bees on the ground in front of the hve, or better, perhaps, directly into the hive.

The view at the right shows how this particular swarm was finally dumped in front. The hive was pried up, and a board leaned up against the bottom-board. At the time the photo was taken the bees were in the act of crawling into the hive.

When a swarm is just dumped, the entrance should be as large as possible. If practicable, the hive-body should be tilted off from the bottom-board to give a large amount of ventilation, and should be left up until the bees cool off and begin housekeeping.

of "guasimas" trees were then planted scattered amongst the hives to provide for shade later on. You can form an idea of the growth of this tree by looking at the two pictures of the house-apiary built on the same ground of this home yard. The smaller picture of this house-apiary was taken when it was just finished. You will notice that there is no tree planted on its side, and I planted at that time a small stick of "guasima" that was lying on the ground. It looks in this picture as if the boys thought that what I wanted to take was their picture instead of the house-apiary. The other picture of this house-apiary was taken a year later, and you will notice that the tree is rather taller than the house itself.

You may be interested in knowing something about this house-apiary, which perhaps will seem to you a strange thing here in this hot climate. It was built for experiment

purposes. It contains fifty hives-two rows on each side. To work the upper row you have to stand on the hives of the lower row, as can be easily seen from its construction shown in the picture. Our honey crop here takes place during the winter months, when most nights are very cold and day time hot. These very cold nights compel the bees to cluster in the lower stories, in some cases abandoning the upper stories entirely for a while, and the queens refrain from laying to their full capacity, not only on this account,

but also from being overcrowded by the bees which store the honey in the lower stories. This is a very important matter to overcome, as our honey season lasts over six months, and if you do not look carefully into this matter you run the risk of your colonies becoming very weak in the midst of the honey season. The artificial heat you can create at night in the house-apiary overcomes the trouble of the queens not laying to their full capacity; and, although at times the colonies in the house-apiary had seven