AFTER HARVEST WORK.—Chapter XVII. 
it may be desirable to introduce a new queen in the fall. The value of a 
young, vigorous queen in a colony to build it up strong for winter and 
to begin brood-rearing promptly the next spring can hardly be overesti- 
mated. It is best, however, to introduce the young queen in time for her 
to have about six weeks to lay eggs for winter bees. This means that the 
young queen should begin to lay not later than the middle of August in the 
North and the first of September in the South. 
Queens that are not laying well or that are not giving satisfaction for 
any reason, whose bees may be poor honey-gatherers or show other unde- 
sirable traits, should be replaced by queens purchased from some reliable 
breeder, the old queen not being removed until the arrival of the new one. 
(See page 59.) 
Finding no queen, eggs, nor young larvae, and still enough room for 
the queen to lay, is not certain proof that the queen is missing. (See page 
57.) It may be that the old queen has stopped laying for a time or has 
been lost, and the young one not yet mated. A frame of eggs and young 
larvae should, therefore, be given to such a colony. If the colony be 
queenless, queen-cells will soon be started. (Seee page 57.) If a young 
queen that has not begun laying is present, the giving of larvae keeps the 
bees contented and may perhaps cause the queen to start laying, since the 
workers begin to feed her a greater quantity of food, just as they ordinar- 
ily do a laying queen. 
If one finds a colony with mostly drone brood or with the eggs placed 
irregularly, he may conclude that such colony has either a drone-layer or 
laying workers. (For directions in such cases, see page 58.) 
Requeening. 
Until the beginner is experienced enough to rear his own queens, he 
should purchase them from some reliable breeder. The amnees he pur- 
chases should always be mated and laying, and may be “untested” or 
“tested.” An “untested” queen is one which is known to the breeder to 
be laying well and sold without any other guarantee. A “tested” queen 
is one that the breeder has kept long enough to deen’ from her progeny 
that she has been purely mated. 
Care of Combs. 
After the honey harvest, the beginner needs to be emphatically caution- 
ed as to the care of his empty combs. If he does not take the best of care to 
store these carefully, they are almost sure to be attacked by mice or by 
wax moths or by both, and so ruined. The best way to take care of these 
combs during the summer is to leave them on the hives where the bees can 
care for them. One strong colony can take care of four or five or even 
more supers of extracting-combs until the arrival of cold weather, after 
which the moth can do no damage. The empty drawn combs and the 
frames of full sheets of foundation, that the beginner may have at the 
close of the season, should be placed in good supers, and these supers 
stacked up in a dry, rain-proof place so that there is no crack nor crevice 
through which a wax moth or mouse can enter. Careful piling of all the 
supers, the bottom one being placed on a perfectly flat surface and the 
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