184 P-IFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



On these accounts it is my practice to leave the matter of 

 superseding entirely to the bees in all cases, except where for 

 some reason other than age it will seem an improvement to 

 replace with a younger queen. That reason may be that the 

 workers of a queen are unusually vicious, that they do not seal 

 their honey white enough, or there may be some other fault, 

 but generally it will be because they did not store honey enough 

 the previous year. When, then, the colony of such a queen 

 shows persistence in the matter of preparation for swarming, 

 she will be replaced by another as part of the treatment of that 

 colony. Bat old age alone will not endanger her life. 



An item of some interest is the fact that when I look 

 through the colonies in the spring to clip any queen that may 

 have whole wings, I find very little use for the scissors if the 

 previous season was very poor, whereas after a big honey-yield 

 I generally find a good deal of clipping to do. In other words, 

 there seems to he more superseding at the close of a good than 

 of a poor year. Has it only happened to come so, or does a 

 good harvest wear out the queen faster? 



THE " JUMBO " HIVE. 



At one time I had strong hopes that by the use of a large 

 hi^'e with a large frame I might greatly diminish, if not entirely 

 suppress, swarming. Others reported success with what was 

 called the Jumbo hive. At Fig. 67 will be seen one of these 

 hives. The frame is 21/3 inches deeper than the regular Lang- 

 stroth frame, and if you will look at the front of the hive in the 

 picture you will see that it i^ 2Vs inches higher than tlic eight- 

 frame dovetailed hive by its side. The Jumbo has ten frames, 

 and the extra depth makes it equivalent to a twelve-frame 

 Langstroth. 



I put bees in two of these hives in the home apiary, and 

 waited to see what would result the next summer with much 

 interest. The very first colony to send out a swarm was in one 

 of these Jumbo hives ! I was sorry, but it didn't make me sick 

 abed. I had become hardened to failures and disappointments 

 in following after the will-o'-the-wisp — non-swarming. 



