ISS tHE PRACTICAL BEE GUIDB!. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

 QUEEN REARING AND INTRODUCTION. 



281. Old Queens. — Attention has already been called to the 

 necessity for supplying young, prolific queens to all stocks 

 requiring them (212). Too much emphasis cannot be laid 

 upon the fact that queens past their second year are past their 

 prime (188). The bee-keeper who desires to work his stocks 

 to the best advantage, will not fail to supplant all such queens. 

 He will not be content to leave this most important part of his 

 work to take care of itself. Either he will purchase good 

 queens from other queen-raisers, and thus introduce new blood 

 into his apiary ; or he will do his own queen rearing. It is 

 quite certain that, in this country, the supplanting of old queens 

 is not attended to as it should be. This may be due to thf; 

 supposed difficulty of rearing queens. There are so 

 many capable workers of bees who are satisfied with average 

 harvests, satisfied with the second best, and deterred from 

 attempting to rear their own queens, because of the trouble or 

 the difficulty which they think that that part of a bee-man's 

 work involves. Bee-keeping can never be raised to the level 

 to which it ought to attain, until queen-rearing is practised, not 

 by the few, but by the many. 



282. Defective Queens. — Sometimes queens are found to be 

 defective, and their places must be supplied bv feitile queens 

 if the colony is to be preserved. Queens that have not been 

 impregnated within three weeks after leaving the cell usually 

 become drone breeders (188). Queens that have been chilled, 

 or half starved, or that have been " balled " (298), or injured in 

 the hive, may lose their fertility and become useless. The 

 bees will generally supplant such queens, but they cannot do 

 so unless the conditions are favourable (196), nor without loss 

 of valuable time. 



283. Queenlessness — Beside the necessity for supplanting 

 aged, and defective queens, there often arises a necessity for 

 supplying fertile queens to stocks whose queens have been 

 lost, or killed, or that have died natural deaths. This is an 

 urgent need which, whether it be observed or not, presents 

 itself more frequently than many suppose. At the time of 

 swarming, queens are sometimes lost if they alight apart from 

 the swarm, undiscovered by the bees or the owner. Unskilful, 



