WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
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 39: HOW TO KNOW A FERTILE QUEEN FROM AN UNFERTILE ONE
By Henry Alley
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

How To ...Nature/Gardening/AnimalsScience - Biology

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.

HOW TO KNOW A FERTILE QUEEN FROM AN UNFERTILE ONE

One who has any considerable experience in queen-rearing has no trouble in distinguishing a fertile queen from one that is unfertile. In twelve hours after a queen has mated there is a perceptible increase in her size. Not only is her abdomen larger around, but it is also longer. These conditions are noticeable in the early part of the season, but at the last of September and during the month of October some other way of judging and knowing whether or not a queen has been fertilized must be adopted. While queens that are fertilized early in the season will at once make preparations to deposit eggs, the late fertilized queens do not. That is, the late fertilized queens will not as quickly increase in size after becoming fertile, as they do earlier in the season. Now to decide positively that a queen is fertile I have tested the matter in this way: About half a pint of bees are taken from a colony having an unfertile queen and allowed to run in the hive of the fertile one.

If the queen in the latter hive proves to be fertile, the strange bees will not molest her; if unfertile, the bees introduced may at once ball and eventually destroy her. This is a simple and quick way to test the matter, and applies only to nucleus colonies, though it may be practiced more or less successfully in full colonies.

Another way to decide whether or not a queen is fertile is to feed honey for a day or so. If fertile she will deposit a few eggs, and lay while the feeding is continued.