92 Farmers’ Bulletin 1222. 
is the blueweed or viper’s bugloss, which blooms later in the summer. 
Beekeepers in the valley will find it helpful to practice the methods 
of wintering herein described and especially important to introduce 
young Italian queens frequently. 
TIME AND FREQUENCY OF REQUEENING. 
It will be evident that there must be no interruption of brood- 
rearing during the period of rearing bees for the winter colony, 
and it is also obvious that nothing should be done which will stop 
egg-laying for even a day during the time between March 1 and 
May 10. During the spring it is difficult to rear queens and in the 
winter packing-cases it would be practically impossible to find the 
old queens and introduce new ones. Clearly, then, requeening should 
be done between May 10 and August 15. The exact time will depend 
on whether or not there is any honey-flow other than that from the 
tulip-tree. If there isa honey-flow following this, then the beekeeper 
will wish to continue brood-rearing without interruption. The best 
time to introduce new queens, so far as preparation for winter is 
concerned, is just in time for them to be mated and laying by August 
15. If the beekeeper rears his own queens, as he should if he is 
heavily engaged in beekeeping, then he may start a lot of queencells 
in late July. About three days before the young queens are due to 
emerge, the beekeeper should remove the old queen from each colony. 
Two days later he should give a queencell to each queenless colony. 
In due time after emergence the young queen will fly from the hive 
and mate with a drone. After an interval of about two days after 
mating she will take up the work of egg-laying, and the young queen 
will be more able to lay a goodly supply of eggs in the late summer 
than will an old one. Since some queens may be lost in matings it 
is well to have additional queencells for this emergency. For meth- 
ods of rearing queens the reader must be referred to the books on 
beekeeping, but it may be said that the successful beekeeper should 
make himself familiar with this branch of the work as soon as pos- 
sible and should not depend on the purchase of all of his queens from 
queen-breeders. 
With the methods of beekeeping herein described, it will be found 
almost necessary to requeen every August. Many beekeepers prac- 
tice requeening every second year, but if this is done it will be 
observed that a considerable number of the two-year-old queens 
will not be able to lay enough eggs to build up the colony prop- 
erly during the spring, and obviously this failure will result in a 
great reduction of the honey-crop. Good queens are the most im- 
portant single item in the apiary management, and they are worth 
all the time and expense required to get them. Those beekeepers 
