The Rearing of Queens 
427 
is eaten away she walks out without excitement and is 
accepted. This is the most common method of introducing 
queens. Some beekeepers dip the queen in honey and place 
her in the colony. The workers promptly remove the honey 
and usually accept the queen. Others fill the hive with 
smoke and close the entrance after letting the queen run in. 
Whatever is done the queen should acquire the colony odor 
so that the workers will not attack her as they normally do 
strange queens. Young virgin queens are more readily 
accepted than mated queens. Colonies that have been 
queenless for a considerable time are usually difficult to 
requeen and this is especially true if in the meantime some 
of the workers have begun to lay eggs (p. 187). In intro¬ 
ducing a queen it is necessary that the colony be queenless 
or the strange queen will be killed. 
Improvement of stock. 
In addition to the manipulations of queen-rearing there 
are some fundamental principles which should be considered. 
It should be the policy not only to provide queens as needed 
but to keep steadily improving the stock. For this work 
beekeepers usually depend on the specialists in queen-rearing 
but it is desirable that each beekeeper keep the ideal of 
bettering his stock constantly before him. The breeding of 
Italian queens for additional yellow on the abdomen, result¬ 
ing in the so-called five-banded bees, clearly demonstrates 
that changes can be made by applying the principles of 
breeding to queen-rearing. While the merits of these bees 
is a subject of dispute the success in this line of endeavor 
should encourage the beekeeper to believe that as striking 
things are possible in other lines of bee breeding. 
It is evident that certain characteristics which the bee¬ 
keeper wishes to develop and some which he wishes to reduce 
or destroy must be inherited. Exceptional prolificness, 
gentleness, excessive swarming, protracted breeding and 
their opposites are characteristic of various races and strains 
of bees but not of the entire species. This leads to the belief 
