84 CHANGING OLD QUEENS FOR YOUNG ONES. 
worker is only a few months—not more than from two to 
four—a great many do not live out half that time. So 
it will be seen that it is only by keeping healthy and pro- 
lifie queens in each stock that we can have populous 
stocks, such as will pay a good profit. 
In my experiments I have in several instances taken 
from a vigorous and very populous stock their queen, and 
at the same time deprived them of the means of rearing 
another. This was done in the honey season. In such 
cases the bees kept on with their labor, though with vis- 
ible reluctance and an appearance of discouragement, 
the number of bees decreasing very rapidly, and in from 
two to three months nearly all had disappeared, not more 
than two or three hundred remaining, where there had 
been from thirty thousand to fifty thousand all in a pros- 
pering condition. 
Other instances have come under my observation, 
clearly showing that the life of the worker honey bee is 
only of a few months duration. One case in fact will 
show: I removed the native queen from a very strong 
stock of native or black bees, in the honey season and 
introduced an Italian queen, in order to change the stock 
from native to Italian. The reader will readily under- 
stand that every egg deposited by the Italian queen after 
her introduction, will produce the Italian variety, the 
workers of which are entirely distinct in color from the 
natives. In a few days after the introduction of the 
Italian queen I found the natives were disappearing, and 
soon after the Italians began to appear. The change 
