Questions You Should Be Able To Answer

1. How can you tell whether a colony of bees is being robbed?

2. What is the chief danger resulting from robbing?

3. How do you plan to go about your apiary work to prevent robbing?

4. Why does robbing make the bees very cross?

5. How do you usually go about finding an Italian queen in a hive of bees?

6. How do you use a queen excluder in finding a queen bee?

7. When robbing is started quite seriously on a colony of bees how would you stop it?

8. How many days is the queen in the larval stage?

9. Describe a safe method of introducing a queen when there is no honey flow on.

10. How does robbing cause the spread of American foul brood?

11. What is the first step in the safe introduction of a queen to a colony of bees?

12. Why is it necessary to destroy queen cells before a queen can be safely introduced?

13. In what location on the comb should the wire screen cage used to introduce the queen be for successful introduction?

14. How long does it take from the time the egg is laid until the worker bee is fully developed?

15. Under what conditions do good queens sometimes lay more than one egg in a cell?

16. When fertile workers develop in a hive what is the most satisfactory way of disposing of that colony?

17. How can you tell when a good queen is present in a hive?

18. Why does a good queen pass up drone cells when laying eggs?

19. Describe the queen excluder method of finding a queen.

20. Why does the body of a queen become distended during the active season?

21. Suppose you wished to introduce a queen to a colony and could not find the old queen. What would you do?

22. Is it safe to assume that because the queen is young she is always going to give the best results in building the colony up to full strength?

23. Why is the "push in the comb cage" method a reliable one for queen introduction ?

24. What is the chief consideration in the selection of a queen?

25. How can you tell the presence of fertile workers in a colony of bees?

26. Describe the movements of a prolific queen during the honey flow.

27. Why is it unsafe to always judge the quality of a queen by her appearance?

A Guide To Seasonal Activities

Get Accurate Information, Average for Your Locality, and Write it Down for Future Reference.

1. Your New Year (Date 8 weeks previous to first frost).

2. End of summer honey flow.

3. Date of beginning of last usual fall flow for requeening.

4. Date of first frost (time to feed winter stores).

5. Date of first killing frost (time to pack bees).

6. Direction of prevailing winter winds.

7. Date of last general bee flight (put bees in cellar).

8. Lowest winter temperature reported (to determine amount of packing).

9. Blooming date of first spring honey flowers (take bees from cellar).

10. Date of fruit bloom (to unpack outdoor-wintered bees).

11. Date of first main honey flows.

12. Date of first swarming preparations by bees.