THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 95 
time, may be upset—whether permanently, and for 
the ultimate advantage of honey-making, time 
alone can tell. 
A single queen, when young and vigorous and 
of good blood, is able to keep an entire hive filled 
with brood throughout the short honey-gathering 
season. The brood-nest of a modern frame-bar 
hive has a comb-surface of over 2,000 square 
inches, giving about 50,000 cells available for the 
breeding of young worker-bees. This represents, 
at times of greatest prosperity, an enormous 
floating population; but if several queens can 
be permanently established in one hive, and the 
hives enlarged to permit each her fullest scope, 
the figures will soon begin to stretch out into 
infinity. Two facts are well known to experienced 
bee-keepers—that a large stock gathers more 
honey than two small stocks containing between 
them the same number of individuals; and that, 
when the honey-crop is in full yield, there are 
seldom enough bees.to harvest it. The whole art 
of latter-day bee-keeping consists in bringing up 
the numerical strength of each colony to its fullest 
in time for the great main nectar-flow. Yet, ina 
good district and in a good season, when huge 
areas of clover or sainfoin come into full blossom 
at the same time, and the nectar must be gathered 
or lost within the space of a fortnight or so, the. 
most populous apiary is seldom equal to the task. 
Probably, in exceptional seasons, half the English 
