. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. VOL. LIX—NO. 8 HAMILTON, ILL., AUGUST, 1919 MONTHLY, $ A YFAR WHOLESALE QUEEN-REARING Methods of a California Queen Breeder Who Rears Thousands of Queens for the Trade-By Frank C. Pellett THERE is no branch of beekeep- ing that requires the exercise of so much skill on the part of the operator as queen-rearing. When conducted on the large scale which is necessary to make it commercially profitable as a specialty, the prob- lems are multiplied. To rear a few queens during the honeyflow, when everything is favorable, is a simple matter, but to conti
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. VOL. LIX—NO. 8 HAMILTON, ILL., AUGUST, 1919 MONTHLY, $ A YFAR WHOLESALE QUEEN-REARING Methods of a California Queen Breeder Who Rears Thousands of Queens for the Trade-By Frank C. Pellett THERE is no branch of beekeep- ing that requires the exercise of so much skill on the part of the operator as queen-rearing. When conducted on the large scale which is necessary to make it commercially profitable as a specialty, the prob- lems are multiplied. To rear a few queens during the honeyflow, when everything is favorable, is a simple matter, but to continue a uniform production, week after week during the entire season, is a different thing. Under natural conditions, queen- cells are only built in preparation for swarming or to supersede a failing queen. Swarming cells are to be ex- pected only when nectar is coming freely from the fields. The queen breeder must imitate natural condi- tions as far as it is possible to do so, in order to induce the bees to con- tinue cell-building. The queen-breed- er who has a location where a light flow of nectar continues for a long period of time is fortunate. Lacking the natural flow, the usual method is to resort to artificial stimulation by feeding a small quantity of thin syrup, daily, to cell-starting and cell- building colonies. Migratory Queen-Rearing We hear much of migratory bee- keeping and it is in California that migratory beekeeping assumes such proportions that it is the common practice of big producers. It has re- mained for a California queen breeder to adapt the practice to his own specialty, and migratory queen rearing may. in time, become popular. J. E. Wing, of San Jose, is one of the most extensive queen breeders on the Pacific Coast, and probably the first to adopt migratory practice to the queen business. With a sud- den termination of the flow at the home yard, he has found it possible to move his outfit a distance of 75 miles, to a point where a honeyflow was in p
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
