70 ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 
self? I am sure it has always paid me well, heretofore, to do so, and 
I do hope that this costly experiment that I have just made will save 
many of you from a like experience. As I have written before, it is 
so easy to get the best of young queens now that have been reared 
from extra good honey-gathering strains that we have no excuse what- 
ever for keeping old inferior queens in our apiary; and I want to ask 
those of you who advocate letting their bees do their own superseding 
if it would not have been much better for me to supersede those 107 
queens last summer, at an expense of about $65, than to lose at least 
$400 worth of bees in leaving it for the bees themselves to attend to. 
KEEPING TRACK OF THE AGE AND QUALITY OF THE QUEENS. 
In the August issue of the Review, 1904, is published an article I 
wrote on keeping track of the age and quality of our queens, which 
is well worth more than a year’s subscription to some of you who 
take that paper; and for the benefit of those who take GLEANINGS only 
I will copy a part of said article: 
TIN TAGS FOR SHOWING AGE AND QUALITY OF QUEENS. 
“Something like 30 years ago I cut out a lot of pieces of tin—some 
round, some half round, and some square, about one inch in diameter; 
and whenever I find a young queen commencing to lay I put one of 
these tags on the front of the hive on the left-hand corner, about two 
inches from the bottom. It is put on with a carpet-tack through the 
center, and is easily taken off with my knife; and it follows that queen 
to every hive she is ever put into. If she proves to be a choice queen 
the tag is put a few inches higher up on the corner of the hive; and 
if very choice, still higher. If she is inferior in any way it is put 
over toward the middle of the hive; if very poor it is put clear over 
to the other side. I use only one shape of tag each summer, with 
all the queens of that summer’s rearing. The next summer I use an- 
other shape, perhaps round or square; then when I walk through the 
apiary I can tell at a glance the age and quality of every queen in 
the yard; and then when I have surplus queens on hand I can go right 
to the hives that contain my poorest queens and supersede them at 
once without having to open any hive unnecessarily. You see I can 
tell at any time. I see by the fronts of the hives just how many 
queens I have of a certain age, also their quality. If you will adopt 
this way of keeping track of your queens you will soon weed out the 
poor ones, and find it a great advantage to you to do so.” 
There, friends, I almost beg of you to take my advice in this mat- 
ter, and adopt some simple method whereby you can tell at a glance 
the age and quality of every queen in your apiary. It is not only a 
source of much satisfaction to know the real merit of all your queens 
when working among them, but I assure you it is also, from a dollar 
point of view, one of much importance. 
In regard to the proper time to supersede, I must differ with those 
who recommend superseding in the fall. My principal reason for doing 
