-204 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



Stock to await the maturity of the young queens. The 

 Apiarian will ordinarily be prepared to form his artificial 

 colonies before any of these young queens are hatched. 



The following is the best plan for removing the wings 

 from the queens. Every hive which contains a young 

 queen, ought to be examined about a week after she has 

 hatched, (see Chapter on Loss of the Queen,) in order to 

 ascertain that she has been impregnated, and has begun to 

 lay eggs. Some of the central combs or those on which the 

 bees are most thickly clustered, should be first lifted out, for 

 she will almost always be found on one of them ; the Apia- 

 rian when he has caught her, should remove the wings on one 

 side with a pair of scissors taking care not to hurt her. On 

 examining his hives next season, let him remove one of the 

 two remaining wings from the queen. The third season, he 

 may deprive her of her last wing. Bees always have four 

 wings, a pair on each side. This plan saves him the trou- 

 ble of marking his hives so as to know the age of the 

 queens they contain. 



As the fertility of the queen generally decreases after the 

 second year, I prefer, just before the drones are destroyed, 

 to kill all the old queens that have entered their third year. 

 In this way, I guard against some of my stocks becom- 

 ing queenless, in consequence of the queen dying of old 

 age, when there is no worker-brood in the hive, from which 

 they can rear another ; or of having a worthless, drone- 

 laying queen whose impregnation has been retarded. These 

 old queens are removed at that period of the year when 

 their colony is strong in numbers ; and as the honey-harvest 

 is by this time, nearly over, their removal is often a positive 

 benefit, instead of a loss. The population is prevented 

 from being over crowded at a time when the bees are con- 

 sumers and not producers, and when the young queen. 



