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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 45: COMPARATIVE SIZE OF QUEENS
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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.

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF QUEENS

Figure 20

Figure 21

Figure 20 nicely and accurately represents a large, fine and well-developed fertile queen bee. I have reared many queens equally as large as the one illustrated in above cut.

Figure 21 is a good and life-size view of an unfertile queen. Such queens vary much in size.

No one should judge of the size of a queen until she is given a chance to develop in a full colony of bees.

Queens kept in small nucleus colonies never reach full development. They must be given larger quarters in order to show to what size they will attain.