208 A Modern Bee-Farm 
worker combs produced, ensuring the maintenance of a 
large working population. 
Again, in simple “swarming without increase”; as 
soon as the young queen with the old stock combs is well 
at work, the swarm and stock are re-united with the young 
queen presiding. The older queen may be destroyed or 
given a small nucleus to build up for further uniting at the 
end of the season. 
The Cause of Low Averages 
is the want of initiative—the absence of definite action, 
by the average bee-keeper. He is content to take things 
as he finds them, supering each stock in rotation as he 
thinks it becomes strong enough. There is often no 
thought of doubling or of rearing young queens in nuclei 
from his best stock; that they may be united to the 
colonies at the right moment. ‘ 
Weak or backward stocks, instead of standing all the 
season, probably with a poor queen, doing little or nothing, 
should be used as nuclei with young queens, each standing 
by a stock to which it can be united in Autumn, or just 
before the heather harvest where it occurs. This question 
of young queens and doubling or uniting is-so important 
that it would bear repetition on every page, and yet not be 
out of place. 
The hive, of course, has much to do with the yield, but 
even improved hive construction is of little avail if its 
benefits are not supplemented by the works of 
The Man of Grit. 
The cottager mentioned secured 120 lbs. from the 
Conqueror Hive, all in sections well filled, while his other 
best hives gave about 80 lbs. each. In another instance, 
an Irish bee-keeper secured 208 well-filled sections from a 
-Conqueror stock and its first swarm, the issue of which 
