264 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
the most unfavourable years, a hive, headed by 
a young and vigorous queen, can be relied upon 
to get itself into the finest fettle by the time the 
main crops are ready for exploitation. In this 
case the beeman has only to make certain from 
time to time that no stock is in absolute want of 
the ordinary means of subsistence. 
But in those warm, favoured regions of the 
south-west, the lands of the apple-blossom and the 
heather, where there is a very early and a very 
late harvest to be gathered, a different system must 
be pursued. Here we touch on the second grand 
principle of successful bee-keeping—the necessity 
for having in all hives only the most prolific mother- 
bees. For profitable honey - getting a queen 
should seldom be kept beyond her second year. 
After that she is usually of little account, and 
should be superseded, either by the bee-master or 
the bees. But where a queen has been over-stimu- 
lated by feeding to raise an immense population in 
the spring of the year, she is rarely capable of 
another supreme effort in the autumn. The best 
policy, therefore, if the heather-harvest is an im- 
portant one, is to remove the old queens as soon 
as the spring work is over, and ‘to substitute for 
them queens that are in their best season, but at 
the beginning of their resources instead of at the 
end. In this way another huge army of workers 
is soon born to the hive, and the double harvest is 
secured, 
