FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 53 



I want a book th^t will suffer no greater harm than to 

 have the cover come off if it should be ram-soaked, it 

 must be stitched together through the middle so that the 

 one set of stitches does the whole busmess, the hrst leat 

 being continuous with the last leaf, the second contmuous 

 with the next to the last, and so on. 



HISTORY OF QUEENS. 



1^ 



While the record-book is very important to keep 

 track of the work from day to day, it is perhaps more 

 important for the purpose of tracing the history of 

 queens from year to year. On each page is left a margin 

 of about ^ of an inch. In that margin is put the last 

 two fieures of the year in which the queen is born, 

 •<)9 if she was born in 1899, '01 if in 1901, and so on. 

 In that margin is also found anything important to have 

 recorded about the queen. "\>ry cross" may be_ m the 

 margin if the workers distinguished themselves m that 

 direction ; ''seals white" if the capping of sections was 

 uncommonly white; "dark" if the workers were unusu- 

 ally dark etc. Especiallv am I interested m the memo- 

 randa in 'the margin relating to swarming and storing 

 You will find szv if the colony of that queen swarmed last 

 vear • no c if no queen-cells were found in the hive dur- 

 ing the whole of last season. ^ ^ if twice I killed queen- 

 cetls that were started. No doubt the printer will feel 

 like putting some periods after these contractions. Please 

 don't do it, Mr. Printer, for I never take time to use any 

 such embellishments when making entries. The number 

 of sections stored by the progeny of the queen the preced- 

 ing year has a place in this margin ; 24 sec if 24 sections 

 were stored ; 160 sec if so many sections w^ere stored, it 

 an unusual number of sections was reached, that record 

 follows the queen as long as she lives. For instance, in 

 the year 1902 there may be found in one case in the mar- 

 gin ^44 sec, 60 sec in ipoo, 178 sec in pp. That means 

 that the progenv of that queen stored 44 sections m the 

 preceding vear, 1901, 60 sections in 1900, and 178 sections 



