THE REARING OF QUEEN BEES. 



NECESSITY OF REaUEENING. 



In modern apiculture it is necessary for the bee keeper to be able to 

 get queens at an}^ time. Many bee keepers requeen all their colonies 

 every year; others requeen every two years; it is necessary, then, that 

 they have some method of rearing- good queens to use in this way. 

 Even where frequent requeening is not practiced, it is nevertheless 

 often necessary to replace queens which do not come up to the stand- 

 ard in egg laying. Again, it often happens that a colonj^ becomes 

 queenless by the accidental death of the queen. Such a colon}^, if left 

 to itself, will rear a queen, provided there are young larvaB in the 

 combs, but few bee keepers are now willing to intrust so important a 

 matter to the bees. 



Frequent requeening is a verj^ necessary thing if the best results 

 are to be obtained. It is a well-established fact that queens lay more 

 eggs during the first year than in any other, and that the number of 

 eggs laid gradually diminishes until the queen is replaced, because of 

 inability to keep up the colony. Every bee keeper knows, too, that, 

 all other things being equal, the greatest amount of surplus honey is 

 produced by the most populous colony. It is evident, then, that 

 frequent requeening means the maximum honey production. 



It has not yet been shown that requeening more than every second 

 year pays for the extra labor, but the best bee keepers hold that 

 queens should not be allowed to live longer than that time. There 

 are, of course, exceptional cases in which the queen will keep up the 

 population of a colony for two or even three years longer than the 

 time given; but unless every colony can be watched constantly it will 

 not pay to risk keeping queens more than two years old.'' 



It is also desirable to have extra queens on hand when the number 

 of colonies in the apiary is to be increased by division or by any of 

 the methods of artificial swarming. If a queen is provided as soon as 



« An exception to this rule occurs in large queen-rearing apiaries where it is desira- 

 ble to have large numbers of choice drones always on hand. Since old queens lay a 

 much larger proportion of drone eggs, it is often desirable to keep one or two old 

 queens of select stock on this account. There is no evidence that drones from old 

 queens lack anything in vitality. 



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