THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



39 



completely exhausted by the improper 

 selection of the mother bee and by in- 

 breeding. 



In-and-in breeding, if persisted in 

 to preserve the beauty of the Italians, 

 which is now being practised by some 

 queen breeders, will produce the same 

 results as improper selection of the 

 breeding queens. 



No intelligent person would ever 

 think of raising a colt from an old bro- 

 ken-down mother, or in raising any kind 

 of an animal from any but the hardiest 

 and best blood and stock in all respects. 

 Why should not the same rules and 

 principles apply in propagating queen 

 bees? One may cross to any extent 

 the different races and strains of bees, 

 yet the coming bee will never be brought 

 out if the laws of reproduction are dis- 

 regarded. The helter-skelter breeding 

 of queens, as now practised by so many 

 dealers in queens, will, sooner or later, 

 ruin an apiary. 



How to produce best results in rearing 

 queens. 



A constant watch should ever be kept 

 by the bee master to determine which 

 of the colonies are the best ; that is, 

 which colonies are doing the best in 

 gathering and storing honey. If there 

 are one hundred colonies in the apiary 

 and twenty-five of the number are do- 

 ing better than the other seventy-five, 

 just mark those colonies and watch for 

 results. The next move should be to 

 select the best from those selected as 

 the best. In this way the best results 

 would surely follow, provided all the 

 queens are reared from selected mothers 

 and fertilized by the drones reared in 

 the selected colonies. This method 

 should be practised continually year 

 after year, until perfection has been 

 reached. 



It is an easy matter to destroy the 

 drones reared in any colony by using a 

 drone- trap and only those drones most 

 desirable should be tolerated in the api- 

 ary at any time. The colony that has a 

 poor queen is usually the one that has 

 the most drones. The importance of 



destroying such drones will be better 

 appreciated when the fact is considered 

 that while there is but one queen to a 

 colony there may be drones enough in 

 the inferior colony to fertilize every 

 young queen in the apiary. By destroy- 

 ing such drones before any have had a 

 chance to fly will certainly prevent all 

 danger of their transmitting any bad 

 blood to young queens. 



All inferior queens should be super- 

 seded and replaced by those reared in 

 the best and most prosperous colonies 

 and from the best queens. If a colony 

 that wintered fairly well is not ready 

 early in the season to work, or ready to 

 do so within a few days after the other 

 colonies have commenced to carry pol- 

 len and honey, there is usually some- 

 thuig wrong with the queen, and she 

 should receive prompt attention soon 

 after the fact of her condition is known. 

 Supersede all such queens as soon as- 

 possible. 



Nature's ways of rearing queens.— Artifi- 

 cial methods, etc. 



Every beekeeper who has read a work 

 upon modern bee culture, and especially 

 one of the treaties upon queen-rearing, 

 must be familiar with nature's method' 

 of rearing queens. All have been taught 

 the way nature has provided for the 

 propagation of the honey bee ; and all! 

 have been taught that not as good> 

 queens can be reared by artificial meth- 

 ods as can be reared under the swarm- 

 ing impulse. Very few people believe 

 or are willing to admit that better queens 

 can be reared by what are called artifi- 

 cial means than are reared in nature's 

 way ; that is, queens reared at swarm- 

 ing time. 



Is the reader aware of the fact that 

 there is but one way to rear queens, and 

 that is nature's way at all times? I 

 know that bees are not expected to 

 drive their queens out of the hive for 

 the purpose of amusing themselves in 

 rearing other queens ; yet it is a well- 

 known fact that bees do supersede their 

 queens and that queens often die after 

 the queen-rearing season is over, and 



