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 ApiaryAlley, Henry
Science
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
Alley, Henry
Bee culture; Bees
In the spring of 1858, I purchased another colony which was in a
box-hive that had a 7 × 9 glass in the back side through which I watched
the bees many hours. Well do I remember the great interest I took in
bees at that time. One day while watching the bees through the glass, I
saw the queen pass around one of the combs, and had really seen the
great “king bee.” Before winter set in, I had not only seen other queen
bees but had actually reared a few. Then I got an idea that I had
learned all there was to know about bees and queen rearing. But this
little bit of egotism was dispelled by each year’s experience, and I
soon found that there was much to learn about bee-keeping. And now,
after my long experience in queen rearing, I find that no one can live
long enough to learn all there is to know about the subject of bees and
apiculture generally. Surely no one can learn the art of bee keeping in
one year as many bee-keepers of the present day claim.
Well, at the end of one year’s experience, I was seized with a desire to
go into queen rearing extensively. By this time I had learned that every
colony of bees had a queen and that drones were male bees; and also
found out hundreds of things about bees that I never before had known. I
had discovered that when a colony of bees was deprived of its queen it
would at once commence to construct queen cells, and rear several young
queens.
Rearing queens was so fascinating that I soon began to rear them in
great numbers, in fact I had them growing at all times during the warm
months. Of course this was only for amusement as no bee-keepers were in
want of queens, nor was there any demand for them. Well, I continued to
advance in the art and enlarge my experience, not only in rearing
queens, but in bee-keeping generally. About this time I found a man who
had also been “stricken” with the bee fever and he had as much
experience with bees as myself, and had reared queens merely to exhibit
at a cattle fair held in his town and only three miles from my place.
This man had made a frame about twelve inches square, to which glass was
fastened on both sides, thus forming a one comb observation hive. A
small piece of brood comb containing eggs and larvae was fastened at the
top of the frame by strings, and the bees, of which there were about a
pint, were actually building queen cells. Thousands of interested people
were watching the bees while at work, and many of the people were asking
all sorts of questions about queens, bees and honey. My first queens
were reared in about the same way as above described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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