QUEEN-EEAKING 109 



is never of any service. Once in a while the eggs of 

 certain queens will not hatch and the reason is difficult 

 to discover. 



When all the food supplies are right, a good Italian 

 queen is capable of laying 4,000 or more eggs per day 

 in the height of the season. Queens incapable of this 

 should not be tolerated; also those that lay little patches 

 of eggs here and there (instead of starting at the centre 

 of the comb and spreading eggs in widening circles until 

 the wood of the frame is encountered), are of no use. 

 The most up-to-date methods for breeding fine, large, 

 perfect mothers will now be described. 



QUEEN-REARING. 



GENERAL METHODS. 



The most popular breed of bees in Australasia is the 

 Italian race. The queens are extra large, gentle, and of 

 pretty tan colour ; the workers are good honey gatherers, 

 hardy — when not inbred for colour — and practically 

 immune to the wax moth. Now if we wish to introduce 

 this breed we will require to purchase a pure breeding 

 queen from some reputable apiarist. When she is safely 

 introduced to a stock, and laying, we are prepared to 

 start rearing queens of Italian blood. If swarming is 

 at hand, Italianising will be comparatively easy. Watch 

 the black and hybrid stocks closely and whenever 

 embryonic queen-cells are started and well supplied with 

 royal food, select a warm bright day, not lower than 

 88 degrees F., — the warmer the better — and lift out the 

 combs with the rudimentary cells and carry them to the 

 hive that has the Italian queen. With the transferring 

 tool (Fig. 57) lift out from the queen-cells on the brood- 

 comb, all the larvae occupying them and substitute some 

 of the smallest grubs from the Italian stock. 



The larvae transposed should not be more than 36 

 hours old — the very young ones are the safest for the 



