Published Monthly by The W. T. Falconer Mfg. Co. 



Vol. XII 



SEPTEMBER, 1902 



No. 9 



REARING GOOD QUEENS. 



A General Discussion and Comparison of Prev- 

 alent Methods, by One of the Veterans. 



(Henry Alley). 



UEEN REARING has 



been my special hobby 



fcr more than forty 



years Have, during 



all these years, been 



through all the ups 



and downs connected 



-«v^Mw*K«|f;; with the business. I 



mMoF' have tested all the best 



methods for producing queens, and 



many processes that have never been 



made public 



Now, I have never found any good 

 reason for trying to outdo nature by 

 forcing a colony to build queen-cells 

 in a way they surely would not do if 

 they had their own way in the matter. 

 I see no reason why artificial cell-cups 

 should be made and eggs or larvae 

 transferred to them, and then compel 

 the bees to rear queens, when they al- 

 ready have a good, prolific queen in the 

 hive. Is that the way bees do if left 

 to select for themselves? Is such a 

 method an up to date plan? Just think 

 for a moment what the effect is on a 

 colony when in a strictly normal con- 

 dition to have a lot of cell-cups thrust 

 in their hive at a time when they are 

 not in condition for rearing queens. I 

 think it requires from 12 to 24 hours 

 to prepare a colony of bees for cell 

 building. Nothing can be done with 

 the cell-cups until the nurse bees have 

 formulated the proper food for nursing 

 and feeding the royal lavae. Now it is 



evident that there is an interval of 

 many hours in which the royal lavae 

 are not matured at all; and in the case 

 of rearing queens in a chamber over a 

 normal colony, the young queens are 

 never properly fed- 



I discovered several years ago that 

 queens reared over a hive of bees hav- 

 ing a good, prolific queen were short- 

 lived and practically worthless. I found 

 that fairly good queens could be reared 

 in above way when bees were gather- 

 ing honey from the fields. But do such 

 queens compare with those reared 

 where the bees make preparation to 

 swarm? They do not! When cell-cups 

 are given the bees during the swarm- 

 ing period, do the bees, as soon as the 

 queen cells are capped, cast a swarm as 

 they do when they construct cells in ac- 

 cordance with their own will? Do 

 these people who rear such queens 

 have swarms issue at such times? No! 

 And why not? It is the unnatural way 

 for bees to rear queens. But some of 

 the bee-men who rear queens by this 

 unnatural way advertise that they are 

 rearing queens in the only natural way. 

 These fellows are about as bad as the 

 parties who advertise that they have 

 queens whose bees will gather honey 

 from red clover. A man wrote me the 

 other day and wanted a queen whose 

 bees would gather honey from red clo- 

 ver. I replied that I had no such bees 

 and would pay one hundred dollar for 

 such a queen. 



Dr. Gallup has written several ar- 

 ticles on queen-rearing for another 

 bee-paper. The articles are generally 

 good and much the doctor has said is 

 painfully true; but when Dr. Gallup or 

 any other man says good queens cannot 



