Imperfectly Understood

Categories: BREEDING.
Bee Keeping: Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained

The time that bees commence raising their young brood is but

imperfectly understood by most people. Many persons that have kept them

for years, have bestowed so little attention on this point, that they

are unable to tell at what time they commence, how they progress, or

when they cease. A kind of an idea that one swarm, and occasionally two

or three, are reared sometime in June, or fore part of summer, is about

the ex ent of their reflections on the subject. Whether the drones

deposit the eggs, or that a portion of the workers are females, and

each raise a young one or two, or whether the "king bee" is the chap

for laying eggs, is a matter beyond their ability to answer. It is but

a few years since, that a correspondent of a Journal of Agriculture

denied the existence of a queen bee, giving the best reasons he had, no

doubt, that is, he had never seen one. But bee-keepers of this class

are so few, it is unnecessary to waste time to convince them; suffice

it to say, that a queen exists with every prosperous swarm, and all

apiarians with much pretensions to science, acknowledge the fact, also,

that she is the mother of the whole family.



The period at which they commence depositing eggs probably depends on

the strength of the colony, amount of honey on hand, &c., and not the

time they commence gathering food.