THOUSAND ANSWERS 235 



A. In the proper sense of the word I doubt that a queen is 

 ever superseded in winter. If a queen is lost, they may try to re- 

 place her almost any time. Your queen is a drone-layer, and so 

 wortliless. 



Q. What causes supersedure when everything apparently 

 looks in good condition. September 2 I had a swarm go out, and 

 upon examination of the hive I found that they had superseded 

 their queen (which was of this year's stock), and there were also 

 four other virgins in the hive. I knew it was too late for a profita- 

 ble swarm, so I pinched the heads off of all but one queen, de- 

 stroyed all remaining cells, and then put the swarm back in the 

 same hive. Was this right? Everything is going along smoothly 

 at this date (Sept. 5.), and the new queen is laying. 



A. You ask what causes supersedure when everything appar- 

 ently looks all right. That "apparently" is probably the answer. 

 A queen may be in some way at fault, whether a few days or a 

 few j'ears old, and you may see nothing wrong, but some way the 

 bees know about it. It is not entirely clear, however, from what 

 you say, whether this was not a case of regular swarming, rather 

 than supersedure. In any case, yovi did well to do as you did. 



Q. How is it that bees neglect to supersede their old queen 

 when there are drones to mate with the young queen, as this has 

 happened to rhe several times late in the fall? 



A. If I understand correctly, you have had queens die in late 

 fall or early spring when there were no drones, and your question 

 is why they didn't supersede them earlier, when plenty of drones 

 were on hand? I don't know. It is possible that some accident 

 may befall a queen, and of course the bees could not foresee this. 

 It would seem that bees recognize the trouble when a queen be- 

 gins to fail, and supersede her; and it is possible to conceive a 

 case in which there was no sign of failure while drones were still 

 present, but an unusually rapid failure after they were gone. The 

 fortunate thing is that such cases are rare; nearly always a queen 

 is superseded with abundance of drones present. 



Swapping Combs. — Q. Would what is called ''swapping combs," 

 i. e., taking a frame of comb or foundation from the surplus-box, 

 and exchanging it for a frame of brood, tend to get the bees to 

 work in the su^er and also tend to prevent svi'a'-uUiig: 



A. It would tend to start the bees to work in the super, but 

 would not do much to prevent swarming. 



Swarm-Box. — Q. How can I use a swarm-box as mentioned in 

 "First Lessons in Beekeeping?" 



