Breeding.
The natural increase of the honey bee is very imperfectly understood by the great majority of bee keepers. Very many suppose that young bees are raised only in the warm summer months, and their ideas of the modus operandi of increase are exceedingly vague. I find that strung stocks have maturing brood nearly every month in the year—have found brood in stocks in December and January.
The queen lays all the fertile eggs in the swarm; consequently all increase is dependent on her. I say the queen lays all the fertile eggs, because occasionally under certain circumstances we find eggs laid by workers, but under my observation such eggs never mature. Egg-laying workers are known to be such, by eggs being found in stocks that have been deprived of their queen, and the means of rearing another. This is one of the wonders of nature, of which no satisfactory solution has been given. The points established as to the sex of bees are these: the queen is a fully developed female; the drones are fully developed males; the worker,—what is it? The worker is said by some to be neuter. If this last is true, how are the eggs produced? Others say the worker is a female with generative organs not fully developed! A pretty nice point—to credit them with the power to produce eggs, without imparting vitality sufficient to germinate.
We will leave this knotty question, as it is of no consequence in the practical management of bees for profit. Suffice it then to say, the queen is the mother of the entire family, and without a queen no swarm of bees can long
The time taken to perfect the three different kinds of bees, queen, worker and drone, varies slightly. The queen will mature in about sixteen days from the time the egg is deposited in the cell. The drone and worker each in about twenty days. This time is subject to some variation, governed by the weather, and number of bees in the hive, which causes the temperature of the hive to be greater or less. A high temperature will forward, while a low temperature will retard, the maturing of the brood.
Swarms with healthy prolific queens increase rapidly through the spring and summer. The queen at this season will deposit from one thousand to fifteen hundred eggs per day. Some writers estimate higher. To secure so large a number of eggs, and consequent increase of bees, we must have healthy prolific queens to start with, and offer every available facility to encourage the desired increase. How to do this successfully is shown further on.
If we wish to secure a good harvest of honey, we must have the bees to collect it, and we must have them at the proper time, viz: when the harvest is ready. To do this we must encourage breeding to the utmost in early spring.
Early in the spring the queen enlarges the circle containing the brood; perhaps, if the stock was very strong, and everything favorable, she laid a few eggs in one or two combs near the center of the cluster of bees in January. Perhaps the cells occupied at that time were less than a dozen, all compact together in a circle, occupying less space than the size of a silver half dollar. As she progresses, this circle is enlarged, and the cells on the opposite side of this comb is used; then the next comb and so on, at the same time enlarging the circle, keeping the brood compactly together, so that the bees, by clustering around it, can keep up the required warmth to forward to maturity the brood. As the young bees hatch, the queen proceeds with her duties of laying eggs, until every brood cell is occupied, and as fast as a bee matures and leaves its cell, she is on hand with an egg to occupy the vacant place. This is kept up without cessation till swarming time, when the hive becomes crowded with bees, then, as preparation for swarming, the queen deposits eggs, from which the bees by a special course of treatment, rear queens. When they are sealed over, as shown in the plate, the old queen leaves the hive with the first swarm to seek a new home. In about ten days the young queens hatch and lead out after-swarms—second, third, etc. When swarming is over, the strongest queen destroys the others, and reigns over the old swarm till another swarming season. This is the process in natural swarming; on my plan we improve upon the process, as will be shown in the proper place.
