QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 



Instead of pressing the end of the wire 

 into the comb, I prefer to draw out two or 

 three coils and to attach the end to a cross- 

 piece, as sliown in Fig. 4. Tlie crosspiece 

 rests across the top bars of two frames, and 

 the queen-cell hangs from it by the drawn- 

 out wire in the centre of the cluster. The 

 queen-cell is thus easily inserted into, or taken 

 out of, the nucleus without lifting out a 

 frame. The wire itself may be bent to form 

 the crosspiece. 



Fig. 4. 

 Queen-cell Pro- 

 tector drawn out. 



IV.— MODERN QUEEN-REARING. 



Queens reared under the swarming im- 

 pulse are, of course, only obtainable from 

 colonies that swarm, and then only during 

 the swarming season, which lasts for about 

 a fortnight in May or June. But, as we 

 have seen, queens are reared from worker 

 larvae in any colony in which the queen is failing or has 

 been lost. By taking advantage of this fact the queen 

 breeder is enabled to rear queens of any particular strain 

 at any time during the season. 



It will have been observed that in the production of a 

 fertile queen there are two distinct stages — (i) the rearing 

 and (2) the fertilisation of the queen. The queen breeder 

 carries on these stages in separate hives. A number of 

 queens are reared in a colony, then they are distributed to 

 nuclei (smaller colonies), one to each nucleus, for fertilisation. 



v.— REARING THE QUEENS. 



It is usually impossible to get queens fertilised before 

 the middle of May, or later than the middle of September. 

 It is, therefore, useless to rear them earlier than May or 

 after the middle of August. Queens are most easily reared 

 and most quickly fertilised in June and July, and the 

 beginner may save himself much trouble and disappointment 

 by confining his operations to these two months. 



