Good laying queens are important to productive beekeeping. Although queens may be able to live for several years, it is to the beekeepers' advantage that their colonies possess good young queens. To ensure that they will have an ample supply of queens, many of them rear their own. The following paragraph from FAO’s publication Beekeeping in Asia gives guidelines on rearing queens. The practice of queen rearing is in Asia and it’s usually done between mid-spring and mid-summer in the temperate regions and between June and October in tropical zones. The technology helps increase the number of queen bees and therefore be able to increase the number of hives a farmer has.