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



Vol. XIII 



MAY, 1903 



No. 5 



QUEEN REARING. 



(F. Greiner.) 



NATURE has undoubtedly prac- 

 ticed the most natural and prop- 

 er method of rearing queen 

 bees. At least I cannot comprehend 

 how more favorable conditions can be 

 produced than those usually present 

 when our bees take to swarming, viz.: 

 Warm weather, a honey flow and a 

 hive full of bees. The majority of 

 queens have been reared under just 

 these most favorable conditions for un- 

 told centuries, and it would seem ihat 

 our queens today would have to be 

 about as perfect as it is possible to 

 have them. 



If certain properties can be fixed by 

 such a certain course of breeding, they 

 must have become fixed in our queens 

 in an intensified degree. I believe they 

 are so fixed, and to undo what has 

 been done by nature would take a great 

 deal of persistent effort on the part of 

 man. 



It has been only a brief space of 

 time since man has attempted to med- 

 dle with this affair of breeding queens. 

 In fact, a very large per cent, of the 

 queens are reared by nature's plan to- 

 day, and I do believe that all talk of 

 our bees having degenerated is non- 

 sense, and out of place. Of course 

 we ought to exercise some care and 

 a little judgment (if these articles can 

 be obtained), in breeding queens, so 

 that their excellence may be main- 

 tained. 



We had not ought to make the mis- 

 take of setting your ideals too high 

 and expect to produce by a few years' 

 exceptional favorable breeding a race 

 of bees that will in a few weeks of 

 time fill with comb, brood and honey 

 a 30x40 feet gamble-roof barn with 

 18 feet posts. Or attain the age of a 

 Methusalem. These things are not 

 within scope of the possible. If there 

 is in the present race of bees a lack 

 of uniformity — if some strains have 

 greater wing power, or longer tongues 

 Or longer something else, then, per- 

 haps, we might select those which pos- 

 sess such qualities as seem to us de- 

 sirable; but, generally speaking, our 

 bees are very good already, even the 

 'ative brown or black bee, a'hd if we 

 wish to maintain the high standard we 

 must follow nature very closely. That 

 is what Dr. Gallup says too. 



We all know that when a colony 

 in normal condition makes preparation 

 for swarming, queen cells or cups are 

 constructed and the queen undoubtedly 

 lays eggs into them. As soon as these 

 eggs hatch, the tiny young larva is fed 

 with royal food which, it is said, differs 

 but very little, if any, from the food 

 given to young worker or drone lar- 

 vae, but in such a manner that a great 

 abundance of the food is always in 

 reach of the little voracious eater. In 

 transferring larvae t^his condition is 

 not fully met. It would be better 

 if we transferred eggs a la Willie 

 Atchley, or made use of cells that 

 were constructed by colonies under the 

 swarming impulse. How to do the 



