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THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



323 



reception of the intended queens. The 

 smaller the larvae, the less jelly is 

 necessary to place in the cups. 



In order to raise good queens at a 

 time when honey is not coming in fast, 

 the coll builders must always be fed 

 liberally and I would again recommend 

 feeding milk strongly sweetened with 

 sugar. We have at this date. July 4, 

 not yet had any honey-flow and I have 

 found it necessary to feed my cell- 

 builders daily, using milk every other 

 (lay. I thus obtained many well-built, 

 large cells. 



To factlitate the work of removing 

 the matured cells from the cell-building 

 colony I have a regular brood-frame so 

 arrangetl that bars may be slid in, 

 notches being cut in the end bars just 

 in the right places, so that three bars 

 may be used at one time and one above 

 the other. When I remove one bar 

 with the most mature cells, another one 

 with fresh cells takes its place, etc. 



A careful record is kept of all the 

 manipulations. 



Very few honey-producers can afford 

 to buy as many queens as they would 

 like to. It seems the same story as it 

 is with the strawberries: We would 

 like to use a good many, and the only 

 way to have either strawberries or 

 queens, and have them plentifully, is to 

 raise them ourselves. It is also nearer 

 my notion to have these things fresh. 

 Strawberries nor queens can be 

 expected to be any better for having 

 traveled over rough roads for several 

 hundred miles; and so I think it will be 

 more profitable to raise the larger part 

 of our queens ourselves. 



That we must procure new blood from 

 time to time goes without saying. We 

 may either buy a number of tested or 

 even untested queens each year and 

 then select the best from them; or we 

 may purchase regular breeding queens, 

 the best that money can buy. 



Naples, N. Y., July 4, 1900. 



Modern Culture (i$1.00 a year) with 

 The American Bee-keeper, $1.00 a year. 



CARDINAL PRINCIPLES IN THE 

 PRODUCTION OF GOOD QUEENS. 



BY G. iM. JUJOLITI'I-K. 



VERY rarely, indeed, do bees, un- 

 molested by man, rear queens, 

 only under two conditions. The 

 first, and most general, is under the 

 conditions of natural swarming, and 

 the second is where the bees, realizing 

 that their queen is not keeping the 

 comb filled with brood, as she did when 

 in her prime, conclude that, if they 

 would prosper, their mother must be 

 replaced with a young and vigorous 

 queen. And as I said at the start, it is 

 very rare indeed to have queens reared 

 under any other circumstances — with 

 the bees in a natural condition — than 

 the above. And why? Because, where 

 a queen is lost to a colony, it is at some 

 other time than at a period when brood 

 — in the egg and larval form — is in the 

 combs, and consequently, with the 

 death of the queen comes, sooner or 

 later, the death of the colony. There- 

 fore, it would be well to look into the 

 principles which govern queen-rearing 

 (and have so governed, by the God- 

 appointed way) principles which gov- 

 erned and kept bees at their best, up to 

 the present century, during whicii cen- 

 tury man has made the great advance- 

 ment which we have today. The 

 principles under which queen-rearing, 

 during nearly six thotisand years was 

 conducted, was plenty of bees in the 

 colony, thus securing plenty of nurse 

 bees and plenty of warmth for the best 

 development and growth of the larvse 

 and pupae, together with plenty of food, 

 both pollen and honey, coming from 

 the fields. Under these conditions the 

 highest type of queens were generally 

 reared, and in all of our operations at 

 queen-rearing these conditions and prin- 

 ciples should be kept in sight if we would 

 succeed in rearing the best of queens. 

 Let me emphasize the matter a little by 

 partially repeating: Nature designed 

 queen-rearing only during a period that 

 honey, as well as pollen, was being 



