Bee-keeping in Victoria. 59 



It is upon the prolificness of the queen and the longevity and vigour of 

 her worker progeny that the larger or smaller amount of surplus honey 

 depends ; but the most prolific queen is not necessarily the best to breed 

 from. Experience has shown that the queen progeny of an exceedingly pro- 

 lific queen rarely equal their mother ; when thev do, they produce workers 

 which are constitutionally delicate, and these ne^'er yield the amount of 

 surplus which one should expect from the great number of bees raised. 

 A prolific queen producing vigorous long-lived workers is very .soon re- 

 stricted in egg production by the relatively large number of old field bees, 

 the honey gatherers filling much of the comb with honey once the colony 

 has attained normal strength. In the case of a colony having a queen 

 producing short-lived workers the position is reversed. Many of the bees 

 ir. such a colony die soon after reaching field bee age ; therefore the young, 

 the nurse bees, predominate. It is the work of the young bees to feed 

 larvae, prepare cells for egg-laying, and attend the queen. As the number 

 cf field bees bringing in honey is little more than sufficient to supply what 

 is needed for immediate consumption, the colony will .show a very large 

 amount of brood in all stages right through the season but will store less 

 honey for the apiarist than colonies which, with a smaller amount of brood, 

 have far more old field bees. 



As a breeder, I prefer the queen of a colonv which has the maximum 

 number of bees from a moderate amount of brood during a season. This 

 results naturally in a good yield of honey, and indicates longevity of the 

 bees. There are, however, other desirable characteristics, such as purity 

 of race, gentleness, and absence of excessive swarming, which are needed. 

 The number of queens which conform to all these requirements is, even in 

 a large apiary, usually rather limited. 



Important as the selection of the queen mother is, the raising of the 

 young queens by the best possible method, and under the most favourable 

 conditions, is not less so. Poor queens may result when queens are raised 

 under unfavourable conditions, no matter how suitable the mother queen 

 is. There are many different methods of raising queens and good queens 

 may be obtained by any one of them if everything is just right. The 

 difficulty is, that many bee-keepers fail to observe when conditions are 

 suitable and when not. A prosperous condition of colonies, an income of 

 pollen and honey, and a warm moist atmosphere, are essential. A heavy 

 honev flow is not the best time for queen rearing, particularly when i\ 

 occurs during hot dry weather. There may be both pollen and honey 

 coming in, and vet the right conditions may not exist, even though atmos- 

 pheric conditions appear favourable. This is probably owing to some 

 deficiency in quality of the stores gathered. It may, however, be taken as 

 an indication that conditions are favourable when the young larvae are 

 surrounded bv a plentiful supply of pure white food. The colony selected 

 for raising cells from the eggs or larvse of the chosen breeding queen 

 should be strong, particularly in nurse bees. 



The " Doolittle " method of transferring young larvae to artificial cell 

 cups and getting the cells raised, either in a queenless colony or over the 

 queen-excluding honeyboard in the super of a strong colony, _ has the 

 advantage of enabling one to know exactly when the queen cells will hatch. 

 The same advantage can be obtained by the "Alley" method without 

 disturbing the young larvae. Queenless bees are compelled to raise queen 

 cells under the impulse of self-preservation, whether the conditions are 

 suitable or not. Often they appear to raise them rather hurriedly. There 



