ee ed, 
CHAPTER IX. 
REARING AND INTRODUCING QUEENS. 
So much of the bee keeper’s success depends upon the strength of 
his colonies, and this in turn upon the character of the queens heading 
these colonies, that he needs to be well informed as to what constitutes 
a really good queen and how to produce such, and, having this knowl- 
edge, it will be profitable to be constantly on the alert to see that all 
colonies are.supplied with the best queens procurable. With a queen 
from a poor strain of bees, or an unprolific one from a good strain, a 
colony, even in a season of abundant honey secretion, will give little or 
no return, while the seasons are not frequent during which one given 
a fair start and having a large, prolific queen of an active honey- 
producing strain can not collect a fair surplus beyond its own needs. 
Admitting this, it will be plain to all that queen bees differ proportion- 
ately in value as much as horses or cattle, and the keeper of bees who 
does not know how to select and produce the best can not be called a 
beemaster. 
When bees swarm they generally leave a number of sealed queen 
cells in the parent colony. With blacks and Italians there are usually 
6 to 10; rarely more than a dozen. Carniolans generally construct 
about two dozen, but under favorable conditions can be induced to 
build 75 to 100 good cells ata time. Fig. 62 represents a comb from a 
hive of Carniolans which had built at one time 70 queen cells. 
Cyprians usually make 30 or 40 queen cells, but may greatly exceed 
this number under the best conditions, while Syrians nearly always 
exceed it, sometimes even building as many as 200; and the writer 
has seen 350 cells constructed at one time by a_single colony of bees 
in Tunis. It might be thought that where so many were constructed 
only a small proportion of them would produce good queens. Such is not 
the case, however; for in general a much larger proportion of the cells 
formed dy these eastern races produce well-developed queens. But in 
all hives some queen cells are undersized. This may be because they 
are located near the bottom or sides, where space for full development 
is lacking, but in many instances it arises from the fact that they are 
formed last, and larve that are really too old to make full-sized, perfect 
queens have to be used. These smaller cells are usually smooth on the 
outside and show thin walls. In selecting cells only the large, slightly 
tapering ones, an inch or more in length and straight, should be saved. 
87 
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