418 
Beekeeping 
time saved the honey-producer in not rearing them. This 
should not be interpreted as an intimation that American 
queen breeders charge excessive prices, for such is emphati¬ 
cally not the case, as is shown by the fact that so many queen 
breeders are compelled to abandon the work in a year or 
two as financially unprofitable. From data furnished the 
author by numerous commercial breeders, it is evident that 
many of them would make more money if they devoted 
their time to honey-production. However, each queen 
costs relatively much less in time and honey in requeening 
perhaps half the colonies in an apiary in a season than it does 
when one rears a large number of queens in making a busi¬ 
ness of rearing queens for sale. 
Systematic requeening. 
The giving of a young queen to each colony at stated times 
is coming to be the approved practice of some of the best 
commercial honey-producers. After two seasons in a large 
colony in temperate regions (about one year in the tropics), 
the majority of queens are incapable of laying the large num¬ 
ber of eggs per day that were laid earlier. There are many 
individual exceptions, and if a beekeeper can give each colony 
considerable attention he may get good results from a large 
per cent of his older queens. The extensive commercial 
honey-producer cannot spend much time on each colony and 
he must work by averages. If, therefore, older queens are less 
prolific and if the cost of requeening does not exceed the 
increased profits due to the giving of young queens, he is 
prudent to requeen. Before deciding this he should count 
the cost and should especially see to it that he is reducing 
his queen-rearing to a system so that no time is wasted in 
this work. As honey-production becomes more intensive 
and as queen-rearing methods become more economical of 
time, an increasing number of extensive beekeepers are 
finding it profitable to rcqueen each colony once in two years 
systematically and, of course, to replace queens earlier if any 
prove defective. 
