. The Bee-keepers' review. Bee culture. THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 35 tie time she may be quite readily discovered. Wheh she is found let the operator, being provided with a small pair of sharp scissors, sit down, and, carefully seizing the queen by the wings with the thumb and fore finger of the right hand, let her seize the clothing on his knee with her feet, then, holding her gently but firmly by the head and shoulders to the knee with the thumb and linger of the left hand, and taking the scissors in the right hand, clip off about two-thirds of one of her large wings. I like to take the clip-
. The Bee-keepers' review. Bee culture. THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 35 tie time she may be quite readily discovered. Wheh she is found let the operator, being provided with a small pair of sharp scissors, sit down, and, carefully seizing the queen by the wings with the thumb and fore finger of the right hand, let her seize the clothing on his knee with her feet, then, holding her gently but firmly by the head and shoulders to the knee with the thumb and linger of the left hand, and taking the scissors in the right hand, clip off about two-thirds of one of her large wings. I like to take the clip- ping from the inside of the wing, leaving a large part of the rigid outer edge of the wing. In this way she is much less disfigured. By clipping the right wing of queens hatched in even years, and the left wing of those hatch- ed in odd years, the age of almost every queen can be determined at a glance. Next, as to the use of the queen trap. For the few who possibly may not understand, I may say briefly that the trap is a small box made so as to close the entrance of the hive except for the passages through perforated zinc with which it is fitted. The perfora- tions admit the free passage of the workers but are too small to allow the queen to pass out, and, in attempting to do so in swarm- ing, she will usually find her way up through a wire cloth cone to an upper appartment where she is securely trapped. The use of the trap in the management of swarming is almost self-evident. As no swarm will desert the apiary unless attended by a queen if a trap is properly fixed to the entrance of the hive no queen can get out, so the danger of loss of bees on account of swarming, is entirely done away with. The trap, it seems to me, must be of especial value to those who keep so small a number of colonies in one place that it is not profita- ble to employ a person to watch them con- tinually during the swarming season as well as to those who for any roason are unable to do so. The traps a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbeecult, bookyear1888
