REARING AND INTRODUCING QUEENS. 89 
lect it will be useless to rear queens where there are no 
drones. 
When stocks are liberally fed early in the season, 
drones will appear correspondingly early. Andif froma 
stock well supplied with drones, you remove the queen, 
the workers will not destroy the drones in that hive 
until they have obtained another fertile laying queen. 
With this idea in view, viz:—early and liberal feeding 
to produce drones early, and depriving a popular stock 
(well supplied with drones) of its queen the last of the 
season, we can have drones sufficient for our purpose 
from early spring until late in the fall. , 
I have in several instances, for the purpose of secur- 
ing drones very early in the spring, deprived a populous 
stock, containing a large number of drones, of its queen, 
very late in the fall, and wintered them queenless. In 
this manner the drones were permitted by the bees to 
remain and winter with the swarm. Larly in the spring 
they were re-enforced with hatching brood from popular 
stocks, but were permitted to rear no queens, in order 
that the drones might be preserved. As soon as drones 
appeared in the other stocks, this stock was furnished 
with a laying queen and it was as prosperous as the 
best. 
By this plan drones may be kept through the winter, 
if their services are required very early in the spring, 
before we can raise them from the best stocks by judi- 
cious feeding, which very rarely can be done. The bees 
for rearing queens are usually obtained from populous 
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