and Us Economic Management, 



CHAPTER XVI. 

 QUEEN RAISING. 



IT should be understood that when a colony is deprived of its 

 queen the bees are soon aware of the loss, and forthwith 

 special cells are constructed upon larvK that may be from one to 

 three or four days old, but very seldom are eggs selected in such 

 a case ot emergency. In due time a queen is hatched from one 

 of such cells, and though she may have enjoyed the usual quantity' 

 of royal jelly, it frequently happens that the first to emerge from 

 her cradle is one that is not well developed, as the oldest larvse 

 would naturally come soonest to maturity. Thus those which 

 had been selected from the egg, or one or two days after hatching 

 therefrom, and would have received only the royal food from the 

 first day of their existence, and consequently are destined to be 

 perfect in formation, are sacrificed to a dwarfed and ill-formed 

 queen. 



As will be seen, only one of the queens is reserved, though 

 several may be raised. There are two points, therefore, of 

 importance to the bee-keeper who wishes to obtain a number of 

 queens. The colony that is to produce them must be made queen- 

 less ; and then . he is to guard against the destruction of the 

 surplus queens. 



The Plan often Recommended, 



and that only recently in the British Bee Journal, of simply 

 removing a queen from a colony in normal condition and then 

 inducing the bees to start queen cells where desired by enlarging 



