CONDITIONS FOR REARING GOOD QUEENS 121 



their own conditions can they secure best results, and for this 

 reason alone are willing to rear their own queens. The difficulty 

 of controlling the male parentage makes the breeding of bees 

 much harder than the breeding of poultry or farm animals 

 which are under the absolute control of the farmer. 



^ The fact that the characteristics of the male offspring of a 

 queen are controlled rather by the mating of her mother than bv 

 her own mating adds to the difficulties. It is a well-known fact 

 that an unfertilized queen will produce drones and this leads 

 to the belief, now generally accepted, that her mating does not 

 directly affect the eggs from which the drones are hatched. 

 Consequently they are only influenced through her female off- 

 spring, and results are only apparent in the following generation. 

 That progress is being made in the improvement of the honey- 

 bee there can be no doubt, and by breeding only from the best 

 queens something is sure to be accomplished even though the male 

 parentage be uncontrolled. 



Scientific men are giving a good deal of attention to the 

 problems presented in breeding bees, and it is only a question 

 of time until methods suited to the conditions to be met will be 

 devised and scientific bee-breeding will be an accomplished fact. 

 About all that the bee-keeper can do is to see that all his 

 colonies have queens of good stock, so that drones from worthless 

 stock will not be present, and breed only from his best queens. 

 Even then the queen may fly some distance from home on her 

 mating trip and meet a black drone from some neighboring 

 apiary. Some bee-keepers make it a practice to see that all small 

 apiaries within two or three miles are requeened with good stock, 

 even furnishing the stock when necessary and doing the work to 

 save the annoyance of mismated queens. In some localities this 

 would be easy of accomplishment, while in others where large 

 numbers of hives are present it would be a big undertaking. 



Necessary Conditions for Rearing Good Queens.— The best 

 queens are reared under the swarming impulse, or in other words 

 under natural conditions. When the bee-keeper would resort 



