It is the young bees that do all the labor in the hive and in rearing queens, and the more young bees there are engaged in the work the better will be the quality of the queens reared.
By this the reader will understand why all the bees of a colony should be used in building cell-cups and in completing queen-cells.
Has any one connected with the rearing of queen-bees ever before explained this point in any book or publication?
Notwithstanding the fact that young bees are constantly maturing as nurse bees, as above detailed, it is not good policy to compel any given lot of bees to commence cell-cup building a second time. After once starting one batch of cell-cups the interest and enthusiasm has vanished, and pretty poor work will be done.
Hens, ducks and birds of all kinds will sit on their eggs for a time, but there is a limit to the “broody” condition in all such cases. Hens have been known to sit six weeks, or rather have been compelled to sit long enough to “hatch out” a second brood of chickens. But in many such cases the nest is deserted before the second lot of eggs mature. It’s but little use to overwork Nature. Natural laws must be observed in all such cases. This I have tried to apply to all my operations in queen-rearing.
PREPARING BEES FOR CELL-BUILDING
METHOD NUMBER TWO
My favorite way of preparing bees for cell-building is given in Method No. 1. No doubt many will say they cannot do any thing of the kind; ’tis too fussy and takes too much time, etc. It is not fussy nor in any way difficult to perform. However, I will give two other methods for preparing bees for cell-building, making a colony queenless, etc.
We must start in the same as in case No. 1, that is, the sections must be removed the day previous.
Now proceed in the usual way of “drumming out” a swarm. The proper way to do this, and the way I practiced artificial swarming, or dividing a colony of bees, is as follows: Blow rottenwood smoke among the bees through the entrance; this so alarms the colony that all the bees commence to fill their sacs with honey. By drumming on sides of the hive, while smoking is being done, greatly helps in the operation.