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Improved Queen-Rearing; or, How to Rear Large, Prolific, Long-Lived Queen Bees / The Result of Nearly Half a Century's Experience in Rearing Queen Bees, Giving the Practical, Every-day Work of the Queen-Rearing Apiary cover

Improved Queen-Rearing; or, How to Rear Large, Prolific, Long-Lived Queen Bees / The Result of Nearly Half a Century's Experience in Rearing Queen Bees, Giving the Practical, Every-day Work of the Queen-Rearing Apiary

Chapter 36: QUEENS, HOW TO PRESERVE AND CARE FOR THEM
By Henry Alley
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About This Book

A practical manual for beekeepers detailing techniques for producing robust, fertile queen bees. It explains hive and brood-frame construction, three methods of cell-building, preparing and handling eggs and young workers, forming and feeding nuclei, and managing drones. The text covers queen care from rearing to mating and introduction, use of queen nurseries and frames, equipment such as drone traps and a tobacco pipe for smoke, and hive management to prevent honey candying. Emphasis is placed on step-by-step, experience-based procedures and apiary organization for both small- and large-scale queen production.

QUEENS, HOW TO PRESERVE AND CARE FOR THEM

At the swarming season many bee-keepers have more or less queen-cells, and sometimes young queens, they would like to preserve if possible to do so and if proper fixtures were at hand to aid them in carrying out their desires. At just that time several cages, such as are described on a previous page and are used in the queen-nursery, would be the right thing to have. Remove the cells from the hive at the proper time, place them in the nursery-cages and after supplying each cage with food sufficient for a week, or longer, place the nursery in some full colony, according to directions given on another page in connection with the description of the nursery. A much better way for the novice to dispose of queen-cells would be to supersede old queens and at once insert the queen-cells. If this seems too risky, dequeen the hive a few days before the cells are matured, say on the fifth day after a swarm issues. This method of dequeening would do away with the necessity of nucleus colonies which one would be obliged to have in order to preserve young queens until fertilized.