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Date: | Sat, 17 Sep 2022 10:47:42 -0400 |
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This is from Bee World, September 1919
REQUEENING BY THE BEES.
How often it is impressed on us to requeen every year if we mean to have a bumper honey crop. C. P. Dadant, in the American Bee Journal, says "I have seen so many good queens prove good the third year that I prefer not to replace a first class two-year old queen by one whose ability is unknown to me. The bees usually requeen in good time, if the matter is left to them."
Dr. Miller comments on this thus :— "Same here. Those who think it pays to requeen every year might gain by getting a new strain of bees. Yet there are always some queens which do not come up to the mark and they should be promptly replaced."
As pertinent to this question let me quote from another American writer in Gleanings, Harry Lathrop, who says:—"Another question I should like to touch on ; Mr. Alexander and some others advocate purchasing or rearing queens for wholesale requeening. In our apiary we practise clipping the queens each spring. When clipping time comes we find that only about ten per cent. of the queens have clipped wings. Does not this indicate that the queens were superseded the previous Autumn? It is claimed that the best queens are produced by superseding; then why buy queens in order to avoid having queens over two years old ? Strange that some things stand out as being of such great importance to some practical men, which things do not seem to be any part of the problem of successful honey production to others. I like to have young vigorous queens of good breeding and do purchase some fine queens from the breeders of best reputation, but when it comes to a good honey year, the blacks and hybrids of the yard, especially those persistent blacks, are right there with the goods, producing as much honey as the best bred stock."
To all of this I can heartily agree, often I have found that a queen had been superseded and never noticed any break in the activity of the colony while this was taking place. [What about the influence of clipping in supersedence ?— Ed. B.W.]
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