234 DR. miller's 



happen that the bees start to supersede a queen without swarm- 

 ing, and then conditions for swarming turn so favorable that they 

 swarm. Again, bees may prepare to swarm, when conditions for 

 swarming turn so unfavorable that they give up swarming. In 

 that case they may simply destroy the cells and allow the old 

 queen to continue, or they may supersede the old queen. If, dur- 

 ing the swarming time, you find queen-cells, you may be almost 

 sure it means swarming. If cells are found somewhat out of the 

 time when most colonies are swarming, you can only make a 

 guess in the case. If the number of cells is small — not more than 

 three or four — and especially if the queen is old, it is likely to 

 mean superseding. For swarming, a larger number of cells will 

 generally be found. 



Q. Will a good colony supersede its worn-out queen, or is it 

 not best to introduce a new queen at least every three years? 



A. Opinions are divided. It is possible that locality may have 

 something to do in the case, as it has in so many other cases. In 

 this locality it is as well to leave the matter to the bees, generally, 

 although it pays any time to supplant a poor queen with a good 

 one, even if the poor one is only a month old. 



Q. In Doolittle's "Queen-Rearing," page 111, he says: "To 

 supersede a queen, hatch a young queen in an upper story over a 

 zinc excluder, and after she is hatched remove the excluder, and 

 your old queen is superseded." Will the plan work invariably? 



A. No; and I do not think Air. Doolittle claims invariable suc- 

 cess. Remember that in the natural course of events every queen 

 is superseded by the bees, and that such a superseding usually oc- 

 curs somewhere in the neighborhood of the close of the harvest. 

 Now, when any colony has a queen that it is about to supersede, 

 if you will get in a little ahead by having over the excluder a vir- 

 gin before one has been reared below, you may be practically 

 certain of success. If you do the same thing earlier in the season, 

 especially where a vigorous queen is doing duty below, you may 

 expect failure. 



Q. Yesterday (Feb. VJ) was the warmest day we have had 

 here this winter, 60 degrees in the shade for the greatest part of 

 the day. I took my bees (ten colonies) out of the cellar for a 

 flight, and found on looking them over that one colony had a 

 patch of drone-brood about 3 inches in diameter, partly capped 

 over on both sides of one comb. I found some worker-brood in 

 the rest of the hives, but this one had none. I found the queen 

 but she looked more like a virgin than a fertile queen. Do bees 

 supersede their queen in winter? 



