THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



51 



On the other liand, what is a queen 

 bee good for without a colony of bees to 

 support her? A queen is as much de- 

 pendent upon a colony for an existence 

 as the bees are dependent upon the 

 queen. The sole function of the 

 queen is to lay eggs ; when she has done 

 this she has done all that nature re- 

 quires of her. She has nothing to do 

 with the nursing or developing of her off- 

 spring, yet the welfare of the colony is 

 dependent upon her i)resence. 



How many eggs will a prolific queen 

 lay in twenty-four hours ? is a question 

 that is often asked. Some queens will 

 not lay more than 300 eggs each twenty- 

 four hours, and such a queen as that is 

 as worthless as one that does not lay any 

 eggs, and in most cases even more so. 



A good queen will average to lay not 

 far from 1200 eggs each twenty-four 

 hours from April i to September 20. 

 A queen that will do this, other things 

 being flworable, is first-class and the 

 owner of such can depend upon getting 

 a large crop of honey from her colony, 

 if there is any forage to be had. 



Berlepsch had a queen that laid three 

 thousand and twenty-one eggs in twen- 

 ty-four hours, by actual count, and in 

 twenty days laid fifty-seven thousand. 



I have no doubt that our two hun- 

 dred dollar queen did equally as well, 

 if not better, in the season of 1890. We 

 drew not less than sixty full L. franes 

 of eggs from her hive between May i 

 and August 20, and I know this queen 

 has laid more than three thousand eggs 

 in twenty-four hours. 



Why should we prize this queen so 

 highly if she is no better than an ordi- 

 nary one? Why does 99 per cent of 

 her queen progeny prove to be so val- 

 uable if she is not better than an ordi- 

 nary queen? The fact is, this queen 

 is even more valuable as a breeding 

 queen than we have claimed. 



Another point comes in here. I do 

 not believe that the most prolific queens 

 are, in all cases, the best ones. I have 

 seen queens that would lay milHons of 

 eggs and keep their hives very full of 

 bees ; in fact, the queens were so pro- 



lific that all her colony could not get 

 in the hive. Ihe bees were very poor 

 honey gatherers and on that account the 

 queen was worthless. Such a queen is 

 certainly too prolific. Professor Cook 

 says, "the activity of the queen is gov- 

 erned largely by the activity of the 

 workers." This is correct. In the 

 spring when bees are gathering large 

 quantities of pollen, brood-rearing is 

 being carried on extensively. As the 

 combs are filled with pollen and honey 

 later in the season, brood- rearing is cur- 

 tailed. The inexperienced beekeeper 

 must not understand that brood rearing 

 ceases in summer when little or no hon- 

 ey is being gathered. Such is net the 

 fact. A colony having a good queen 

 always has its combs well filled with 

 brood during the warm months, and it 

 matters not whether there is an abun- 

 dance or a scarcity of forage. In the 

 season of brood-rearing there is always 

 plenty of brood in all stages of develop- 

 ment in most hives unless there is some- 

 thing wrong with the queen. 



DO QUEKNS STING? 



Do queens ever sting a person ? We 

 do not see how they can, though we 

 have seen them try hard to do so. The 

 sting of the queen is not straight like 

 that of the worker. It is curving and 

 is not easily thrust into the flesh. The 

 sting of the queen seems to have been 

 designed for the sole purpose of destroy- 

 ing a rival queen. 



IIf>W QUEENS FIGHT. 



When two queens are placed in a 

 hive, or when there is more than one 

 queen in a colony at the same time, 

 there will be trouble ; and it will hap- 

 pen just the moment the queens meet 

 face to face. Queens do not go to bat- 

 tle by first having a war of words, as a 

 good manv men do. but when they meet 

 they deliberately chnch and the one 

 that has the advantage of position at 

 the start comes off the victor ; the other 

 queen receives her death wound in the 

 thorax, just under the wing, from the 

 curved sting of her antagonist. 



