688 
QUEEN-REARING 
very best queens, it may not always be con¬ 
venient to requeen during the swarming 
season, which in some localities may be a 
very bad thing to do, owing to the in¬ 
terruption that it makes in the regular 
production of honey; for some believe 
that a good many colonies will not do as 
well in honey-gathering when they are 
queenless. If good swarming-cells are avail¬ 
able, however, they may be given to nuclei 
in order to save them. 
Among the several systems of rearing 
queens, the one put out by Mr. Doolittle 
a few years ago forms the basis of some 
of the best now in vogue. It is very sim¬ 
ple, requiring no special tools more than 
one can improvise for himself. Thorolv 
understanding this, the reader will be in 
position to carry out the more advanced 
ideas put forth by others'. 
THE DOOLITTLE METHOD OF REARING QUEENS. 
While Mr. Doolittle’s system seems to be 
artificial he endeavored to make his meth¬ 
ods conform as nearly as possible to Na¬ 
ture’s ways. It is of prime importance 
in the rearing of queens to bring about 
conditions that will approach, as nearly as 
possible, those that are generally present 
during the swarming season or supersed- 
ure at a time when the bees supply the cell- 
cups lavishly with royal food. One of the 
first requisites for cell-building is very 
strong colonies; second, a light honey 
flow, or a condition almost analogous, viz., 
stimulative feeding if the honey is not then 
coming in. Queens reared during a dearth 
of honey, or queens from cells reared in 
nuclei, are apt to be small. The mothers 
that do their best work are those that are 
large, and capable of laying at least from 
3,000 to 4,000 eggs per day.* A queen 
that is incapable of this should not be re¬ 
tained. A colony with a good queen might 
earn for its owner in a good season $5.00 
* It is not necessarily the large queens which do 
the hest work. Also 3,000 to 4,000 is hardly the 
maximum of “best” queens. A Langstroth comb 
has approximately 6,000 cells, and good queens 
will not infrequently fill all of one and part of 
another in 24 hours. This summer I saw 14 colo¬ 
nies, each with two 12-frame chambers for the 
queen; and in several which I inspected, the 
queens had the whole 24 frames filled with brood 
in various stages. This figures out like this: 24 
times 6.000 °ouals 144 000 cells of brood. Divide 
this by 21, the time from egg to mature bee, and 
the result is 6 837 for a day. Allowing for some 
pollen (and there was not much in those 24 combs) 
the figure 6 000 could not have be°c far from what 
those queens were doing. — A. C. Miller. 
to $25.00 in clean cash. In the same sea¬ 
son the same colony (or, perhaps, to speak 
more exactly the same hive of bees), with 
a poorer queen, would bring in less than 
half that amount. A queen that can average 
2,000 or 3,000 eggs a day at the right time 
of the year, so that there will be a large 
force of bees ready to begin on the honey 
when it does come, is the kind of queen 
that should be reared. 
The old way of raising queens was to 
make a colony or a nucleus queenless; wait 
for the bees to build their own cells; then 
distribute them to colonies made queenless 
beforehand. This plan is very slow and 
wasteful, and, worst of all, results in the 
rearing of inferior queens. Mr. Doolittle 
took advantage of Nature’s way to such 
an extent that he was enabled to rear a 
large number of queens from some selected 
breeder, by increasing the number of cells 
ordinarily built; for the prime requisite in 
queen-rearing is cells—plenty of them— 
that will furnish good, strong, healthy 
queens. 
The first step in queen-rearing is to pro¬ 
vide cell cups. Many times, when an 
apiarist is going thru his yard he can cut 
out embryo cell cups. These can be utilized 
at some future time for the purpose of 
grafting. But such cells are not generally 
found in large numbers, and after they are 
gathered, are exceedingly frail, irregular 
in shape, and will not bear much handling. 
HOW TO MAKE DOOLITTLE CELL CUPS. 
Mr. Doolittle was among the first who 
conceived the idea of making artificial cell 
cups that should not only be regular in 
form but of such construction as to stand 
any reasonable amount of handling. Con¬ 
trary to what one might expect., such cells 
are just as readily accepted by the bees as 
those they make in the good old-fashioned 
way; and, what is of considerable impor¬ 
tance, they can be made in any quantity by 
one of ordinary intelligence. 
Mr. Doolittle took a wooden rake-tooth, 
and whittled .and sandpapered the point so 
that it was similar in size and shape to the 
bottom of the ordinary queen-cell. Prepar¬ 
atory to forming the cells he had a little 
pan of beeswax, kept hot by means of a 
lamp; also a cup of water. Taking one 
of these cell-forming sticks he dipped it 
