4 SPECIAL BULLETIN NO. 49 



sirup made of one part sugar and one part water fed in quantities' of about 

 a pint each day. By feeding just this way most of the commercial queen 

 breeders are able to carry on their operations, regardless of honey flows, 

 during every warm month of the year. 



Yet good queen breeders do not like heavy honey flows and seek loca- 

 tions where only light honey flows are found. For altho some honey must 

 come in each day to keep a colony's morale at the right pitch for cell build- 

 ing, heavy honey flows demoralize their cell building behavior very badly. 

 They may become so interested in gathering honey as to neglect cells, 

 underfeed the larvae, seal them too soon, or otherwise spoil them. At such 

 times the queen breeder frequently finds it necessary to destroy scores of cells. 

 So far as possible, then, the ordinary beekeeper should avoid having cells 

 built during heavy honey flows. 



SUMMARY OF NECESSARY CONDITIONS 



To recapitulate, three conditions constitute the A B C of successful 

 queen rearing, namely: warm weather, very strong colonies of young bees, 

 the gathering of honey and pollen each day. Unless all of them are present 

 each day it is useless to attempt to rear good queens. With all of them 

 present any workable method of getting cells built is likely to produce good 

 results. Since, however, some methods, tho successful, are yet wasteful 

 of time and ill adapted to the ordinary beekeeper's needs, it seems advisable 

 to present in detail one or two methods of getting cells. 



SWARM CELLS 



Probably the most common method is to avail one's self of swarm 

 cells. Unless very drastic preventive treatment be used on them a goodly 

 portion of one's colonies build natural swarm cells and cast swarms. It is 

 easy for even a beginner in beekeeping to cut out these when the virgins 

 are ready to emerge and use them to displace undesirable queens in his 

 apiary. If he possesses a few good Italian colonies and can get swarm 

 cells from them this practice is excellent. No cells are ever built better 

 than natural swarm cells. When such cells are built all the essential con- 

 ditions for cell building are present in the superlative degree. Furthermore, 

 the eggs from which the queen larvae hatch have been fed in the swarm cells 

 from the beginning, and so the larvae have been fed and treated as pro- 

 spective queens from their earliest appearance. There is no danger that 

 any of them have been developed too far toward workers before being se- 

 lected for queens. Unfortunately this can not be said of all queens reared 

 by artificial methods. 



Objection to Swarm Cells 



But swarm cells are available only during the main honey flow and 

 not many beekeepers find it profitable or convenient to requeen their 

 bees at that time. Indeed it is frequently impossible to do so. At best, 

 requeening a colony during the usual clover flow reduces the surplus 

 honey. For bees do not work well when queenless, yet with the best of 

 luck colonies to be requeened must be without a laying queen ten days, and 

 many of them losing their first virgin must remain so more than twice 



