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 AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION DIVISION 



Special Bulletin No. 49 



University Farm, St. Paul July 1920 



Published by the University of Minnesota, College of Agriculture, Extension Division, 

 A. D. Wilson, Director, and distributed in furtherance of the purposes of the cooperative 

 agricultural extension work provided for in the Act of Congress of May 8, 1914. 



OyEEN REARING 



By G. C. Matth ews, 

 Division of Bee Culture 



IMPORTANCE OF GOOD QUEEN 



With the possible exception of swarm control probably no factor enters 

 so largely into successful management of bees for producmg honey as does 

 control of the quality of one's queens. Most beekeepers realize the im- 

 portance of always having good queens, but few realize it strongly enough to 

 induce them to set about securing a good queen in each colony. Moreover, 

 of those who do try queen rearing only' the lesser part succeed. Even 

 among commercial honey producers who count their colonies by the hun- 

 dred are many whose practices of queen rearing would look very crude when 

 viewed by the expert queen breeder or by any one who has given much 

 thought to queen rearing. It frequently happens that queens reared by such 

 crude methods are of much poorer quality than the ones found in colonies 

 unmolested by their owner. In other words sucb queen rearing is worse 

 than none at all. 



PURPOSE OF THIS BULLETIN 



It is the purpose of this bulletin to aid Minnesota beekeepers in sup- 

 plying each of their colonies with a young and vigorous Italian queen before 

 fall. Since many of the beekeepers of the state are beginners, or have at best 

 very slight experience, the material in the following pages is meant pri- 

 marily for those who must commence with the very rudiments of beekeeping. 

 Yet at the same time it is hoped that the method outlined may also be of 

 service to extensive beekeepers. Since Dr. C. C. Miller, America's foremost 

 bee expert, recommends this method and says that he has used it in re- 

 queening apairies numbering at one time three hundred and eighty 1 colo- 

 nies, it is evident that it really is adequate to the needs of any Minnesota 

 beekeeper. 



NEED FOR STUDY OF BEE BEHAVIOR 



Whoever the beekeeper may be, however many colonies he may manage, 

 before he can hope to rear better queens than the bees possess when let 

 alone he must make a study of the fundamentals of bee behavior with 

 special reference to the building of queen cells, the acceptance of foreign 

 queen cells, or virgins, or laying queens, the supersedure of queens, the 



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