tailieunhanh - Bees And Honey - Part 8

Queen rearing We have stressed the need to have young mated queens available at various times during the active season: in the spring to replace a 'poor queen' and in the swarming season to replace queens in colonies that have made up their minds to swarm. | Queen rearing We have stressed the need to have young mated queens available at various times during the active season in the spring to replace a poor queen and in the swarming season to replace queens in colonies that have made up their minds to swarm. Also at those times all through the active season from April to the end of July when queens may suddenly fail and need replacing and at the end of the season when two-year-old queens should be replaced with young ones. In other words for many reasons the useful length of life of queens may vary considerably and some preparation must be made to provide replacements which are of good quality and breeding. With the honeybee there is a more obvious difference between the concepts of quality and breeding than with many other animals. The quality of a good queen with excellent inheritance can be heavily concealed by poor nurture during her larval development. Bee breeding is difficult and although extremely interesting may have to be left to the beekeeper with a large number of colonies. Queen rearing on the other hand can and should be practised by all beekeepers. The queens that are to be used in the apiary should be the product of thought and planning. They should not be the queens that the colony happens to make when it can no longer hold together with the queen it has. We know that the fertilized egg of the honeybee can be turned into either a worker or a queen dependent upon how it is housed and fed. We also know from experience and research that the best queens are those produced in large colonies where there are lots of young bees and plenty of pollen for them to feed on when they are making bee milk . The queen larvae are then fed to a maximum and grow large and with a large number of egg tubes in their ovaries. In contrast the small nucleus will never be able to produce a top-line queen. The nucleus is usually struggling to build up and has as many worker larvae mouths to feed as it can manage. To expect a .