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
This one thing alone is a great point with me in my system of
queen-rearing, as I can know, and so can any one who practices this
method, just when to prepare bees for cell-building.
If a comb containing eggs is removed every day and a clean comb inserted
in its place, cell-building can go on every day in the week; and that is
the right way to do if a supply of queens is to be kept up to meet the
demands of customers whose orders come by every mail.
Now it may be that one queen will not supply all the eggs needed, or
that it is desired to rear more than one strain of queens. When this is
so, more breeding queens may be used, and they may be kept in small
hives. I have found that one good queen will supply enough eggs for 1500
young queens in one season.
[Illustration: Figure 1]
HOW TO START THE QUEEN-BREEDER COLONY
I will now describe the hive, fig. 1, for keeping the breeding queen in,
and give the dimensions of all the parts so that any one can make the
entire thing. Sides of hive, 6 in. high × 7¾ in. long × ½ in. thick;
ends, 6 × 6 in., ⅞ in. thick. Make rabbit for frames to rest on ½ × ½
in. in the 6 × 6 × ⅞ in. thick pieces. As the top bar of frame is but ¼
in. thick, there will be a bee-space of ¼ in. between the cover of the
hive and the top of the frame, and plenty of room under the frames for
the bees to cluster and be kept out of the way while the combs are being
handled. The bottom of the hive is 9 × 8¾ in. × ⅞ in. thick and is
nailed firmly to the bottom of the box. The top, or cover, is the same
as the bottom only there are two 1 × ⅞ in. thick clamps nailed on to
prevent the board from warping. Use ⅞ in. boards for the entire hive,
excepting the sides, as these hives must necessarily be out in all sorts
of weather, and rest upon the ground.
It will be found that the width of the hive allows for more room than a
regular bee-space for four frames, but this is quite an advantage when
handling the frames, as just a bee-space does not allow sufficient room
for easy handling the combs; and if they go in closely the queen and
many of the bees may be crushed when the frames are removed.
The dimensions of the frames are as follows: Top bar 6½ × ⅞ × ¼ in.;
bottom bar 5½ × ⅞ × ¼ in.; end pieces 5½ × ⅞ × ¼ in. The top and bottom
bars are nailed to the end pieces. A block is used to form them on when
nailed, so that when the frames are put up they are all alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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