All who undertake to rear queens should understand that before such work should begin the whole apiary should be put in the highest state of prosperity; and the colonies to be used in queen-rearing made very strong in numbers. The combs of all cell-building colonies should be well filled with honey and pollen. It would be the merest folly to attempt to rear queens when the whole or even a part of the apiary is in a state of semi-starvation. So you see queen-rearing should not be commenced in the spring until the weather is quite warm and the bees have had a chance to breed up, fill all combs with brood and gather nectar from the early bloom. Give the bees time enough on the early bloom to get the swarming fever on.
Here in New England, in Massachusetts particularly, the 8th of May is about as early as it is safe to commence to rear queens. However, if the weather is fairly warm in April and the first week of May, colonies can be so fed and stimulated that they may think it is about time to get ready to swarm. By the way, I have heard of swarms issuing as early as the 10th of May, and had one swarm on May 10, 1902.
Now here is a point at the start that should not be lost sight of. In breeding queen bees the same rules should be observed as in the breeding of animals. If desired to rear a colt, calf, chicken or any other animal, the parents selected are not taken from scrubs or inferior stock. The very best are selected. The same principle applies to bees.
Now for a queen mother take the best queen in the apiary, also for a drone mother equal care should be taken to obtain the best. Of course in the selection of the mother queen color and beauty are important factors to be considered, and so is prolificness, longevity, and honey-gathering qualities. It takes pretty good stock to combine all the above named points. As for gentleness I find almost any strain of bees docile enough to be handled with the use of a good bellows smoker. However, bees that have vigorous dispositions are usually good honey-gatherers, and no queen need be rejected as a breeder on account of the vicious disposition of her worker progeny. Only an occasional queen breeds vicious bees, and this trait is but seldom transmitted to offspring.
TO PROCURE EGGS FOR CELL-BUILDING; WHERE TO KEEP THE BREEDING-QUEEN
If only a few queens are to be reared, the mother bee may be kept in a full colony; and if a few dozen queens only are required, I advise placing a comb that the queens have used once or twice for brood in the centre of a large colony. In about five days this comb should contain several thousand eggs. Now some good queens can be reared on this comb by the plan given as the nucleus system; but if you like to work with bees for amusement and experiment, try the plan I shall now give.
When a large number of queens are to be reared, it will be found a good plan to keep the breeding queen in a small hive having frames about five inches square, with five frames to a hive. I have used such an arrangement a great many years as above stated, and find it superior, in many ways to a full sized frame for getting eggs for cell-building. By this plan no combs are cut or mutilated when a few eggs are wanted, whereas if full frames are used many good combs will necessarily be destroyed during the season. Then again, it is very much more trouble and work to open a large hive than a small one when necessary to have some eggs to use. Any person rearing queens feels the need of time saving devices, as there is always something to do when queen-rearing is going on; I have found it so every day during the season.
One of the small combs will contain enough eggs for fifty queen-cells, and a good prolific queen will fill such a comb and put an egg in every cell during each twenty-four hours. Does not the reader see that by this arrangement there are always fresh eggs at hand, and the exact age of the eggs can be known to within almost an hour?
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.