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.
In the year 1860 I practiced queen rearing on a larger scale, as we had then heard about Mr. Langstroth and his wonderful book and still more wonderful hive, which is today more marvelous than anything else connected with apiculture. From this time on rapid advancement was made not only in queen rearing but in all branches of bee culture. We soon went from box-hives to movable-comb hives. About this time the famous Italian bees came in, and then queen-rearing was carried on in earnest; not for amusement but queens were reared by the thousand for sale. At first they were sent by express in small one-comb boxes, then by mail to all parts of the United States; later on queens went by mail to all parts of the world.
I have continued to rear queens for sale every year since 1860. At that time no one had much knowledge of queen-rearing, and Mr. Langstroth’s book was the only guide for every queen-dealer, and without his hive and book but little could have been done in the way of rearing queens.
All who reared queens in those way-back days had good success in obtaining first-class queens. You see no one had got “on to” the idea that nature could be cheated and outdone in the production of queen bees. Within a few years queens have been reared by such methods that nearly all sold have proved to be worthless, so that dealers find they must go back and adopt some of the early methods in order to give satisfaction to their customers.
FIRST IMPROVEMENTS IN QUEEN-REARING
I shall not claim that any very great improvements have been made in the quality of queens reared by the methods given here.
Having told you how queens were reared in the early days of the queen-rearing business, I can now only give the process of doing the work in other ways by improved methods. It will be understood that after the advent of the movable-comb hive, bee-keeping took on a rapid move. The second advance of importance was made when Mr. J. B. Parsons of Flushing, N. Y., imported some Italian bees. It was soon noised all over the United States that the yellow-banded bees were better than the common black ones, or the German bee.
At this time many bee-keepers were in condition to rear queens and they did so, and thus the queen-rearing and supply business has been on the increase since the year 1862, or the advent of the Italian bee. We all had, or thought we had, a lot of “know how.” Whether we had the know how or not, no one experienced any trouble in rearing good queens, all being satisfactory except in purity. Every one who purchased Italian queens expected them to throw all three-banded bees, and it was found almost impossible to get a breeding queen that could be called strictly pure. There was no fixed purity to the Italians; they were and are to this day nothing but a hybrid strain of bees. With the exception of purity everything went on smoothly in queen rearing.
Although some improvement has been made in the purity of the Italians, there are very few pure queens reared; and bee-keepers continue to find fault with the queens they purchase if there happens to be even but a dozen “one-banded” bees in a large colony.