228 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
than the usual stock of winter food. Inform him 
that he is acting on a mistaken principle when he 
imagines that his bees are worn out with age—the 
common plea for destroying them; tell him that 
the insects are short-lived, and periodically renewed, 
so that the colony alone becomes old; moreover, that 
a large proportion of the bees at the close of the 
season are those produced in the later months; the 
older ones gradually disappearing in the autumn, to 
be succeeded by others destined to become the early 
labourers of the opening new year.* 
As remarked already in the section on ‘ Autumn 
Population,” it must not be imagined that all the 
bees collected together at this time to form a stock, 
are destined to survive till the spring. The day of life 
may, with many of them, be already far spent; but 
we have shown in what way their presence, though 
but temporary in the hive, indirectly contributes to 
augment the numbers of future spring labourers. 
However numerous may be the eggs laid in the spring, 
a portion only are of avail in any but a hive so well 
peopled as to create a favourable temperature for 
hatching them, and to supply the means necessary 
to their full development. Thus strength in one 
year begets it in succeeding ones; and it must be 
remembered how influential is warmth to the early 
productive powers of the queen, without which all 
goes wrong; and also how important it is in the 
opening spring to be able to spare from the home 
* In many cases where proprietors have been obstinately bent on 
the old mode of destruction, the bees have been stupefied by wiser 
neighbours, taken home by them, and added to weak stocks of their 
own, which have turned to good account in the following spring. 
