110 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



till about ten days after the old one dies, and it is ten 

 days more before she begins to lay. But there is the risk 

 of the loss of the whole, for if the queen dies when she is 

 not laying, the bees cannot raise a successor. 



Now, in the swarming system, the bee-master may 

 have nothing but young queens in his hives, by destroy- 

 ing the queens of the first swarms when the bees are 

 united in the autumn. We hope we have made this 

 matter so plain and simple that none wiU misunderstand 

 our meaning. If the bee-keeping reader is seeking know- 

 ledge on the question before us, we trust he begins now 

 to feel his feet touching pretty solid ground. 



But some bee-keepers say, " We don't want swarms ; we 

 want supers of honeycomb ; it is not an increase of hives, 

 but an increase of pure honeycomb we are aiming at." 

 And the question may be urged whether the swarming or 

 non-swarming system is best for getting most supers of 

 honeycomb. At present we could not answer this ques- 

 tion with any degree of certainty, for we have not tested 

 it by experiment. And even if fairly tested by actual 

 experiment in one season or locality, the same experiment 

 in another locality or season may produce diiferent results. 

 We are strongly inclined to believe that the swarming 

 system will yield more supers than the non-swarming one, 

 if the bee-keeper understands his work, and earnestly 

 sets his wits to the task of getting all the supers possible. 

 But tell us how you would set your wits to the task of 

 getting supers and swarms too 1 Well, we would have 

 our hives well filled with bees in autumn, as already de- 

 scribed. They would be ready to swarm very early in 

 May ; but before they were ready to swarm we would 

 put a super to hold 8 lb. or 10 lb. on each. If the 

 weather permitted, and the .hives did not swarm, these 

 supers would be filled in fourteen or sixteen days. After 



