THE REARING OF QUEEN BEES 
NECESSITY OF REQUEENING. 
In modern apiculture it is necessary for the bee keeper to be able to 
get queens at any time. Many bee keepers requeen all their colonies 
every year; others requeen every two years; it is necessary, then, that 
they have some method of rearing good queens to use in this way. 
Even where frequent requeening is not practiced, it is nevertheless 
often necessary to replace queens which do not come up to the stand- 
ard in egg laying. Again, it often happens that a colony becomes 
queenless by the accidental death of the queen. Such a colony, if left 
to itself, will rear a queen, provided there are young larvae in the 
combs, but few bee keepers are now willing to intrust so important a 
matter to the bees. 
Frequent requeening is a very necessary thing if the best results 
are to be obtained. It is a well-established fact that queens lay more 
eggs during the first year than in any other, and that the number of 
eggs laid gradually diminishes until the queen is replaced, because of 
inabilit} 7 to keep up the colony. Every bee keeper knows, too. that, 
all other things being equal, the greatest amount of surplus honey is 
produced by the most populous colony. It is eyident, then, that 
frequent requeening means the maximum honey production. 
Jt has not yet been shown that requeening more than every second 
year pays for the extra labor, but the best bee keepers hold that 
queens should not be allowed to live longer than that time. There 
are, of course, exceptional cases in which the queen will keep up the 
population of a colony for two or even three years longer than the 
time given; but unless every colony can be watched constantly it will 
not pay to risk keeping queens more than two years old." 
It is also desirable to have extra queens on hand when the number 
of colonies in the apiary is to be increased by division or by any of 
the methods of artificial swarming. If a queen is provided as soon as 
"An exception to this rule occurs in large queen-rearing apiaries where it is desira- 
ble to have large numbers of choice drones always on hand. Since old queens lav a 
much larger proportion of drone eggs, it is often desirable to keep one or two old 
queens of select stock on this account. There is no evidence that drones from old 
queens lack anything in vitality. 
