154 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



swarmers, we put queens in them, or royal cells with 

 royal inmates (cut from earlier swarmers). To give late 

 swarmers perfect queens as soon as their own have left 

 or been taken from them, is one of the master-strokes of 

 bee-management. They are thus helped by getting per- 

 fect queens long before they could rear them. By giving 

 queens in this way to late swarmers, second swarms will 

 not be obtained from them, if the introduction of queens 

 from other hives has been successful. 



Before we leave this subject, let us give the reader an- 

 other idea (a little bit of our own peculiar practice), which 

 he may find in future years to be of some importance. 

 In bee-keeping, practice must vary with the season. A 

 man with open eye and active brain will not always be 

 guided by rote and rule ; he improves upon his own 

 practice and the teaching of others. In most seasons 

 large bee-keepers have early and later swarmers. Some 

 seasons hives contain but little honey three weeks after 

 swarming. In such seasons we do not get much honey at 

 the first harvest ; but stiU occasionally we turn the bees 

 out of hives when they do not contain much honey, and 

 put them into empty hives ; and immediately take swarms 

 from later stocks to repeople those hives from which the 

 bees have been driven. Why ? Because the queens in 

 these hives are just born, and will not commence to lay 

 for ten or twelve days ; whereas the queens in the later 

 swarmers are laying two thousand eggs daily. The bees 

 have thus an opportunity of setting the eggs laid by their 

 queens, and filling their hives with brood from side to 

 side ; and the " turnouts " put into the empty hives have 

 time to make combs before their queens commence to lay. 

 It is not necessary to wait till the twenty-first day before 

 the bees are turned out, if their hives are repeopled imme- 

 diately afterwards, for the swarms imported to them hatch 



