and its Economic Management. 49 



nest by storing some honey and large quantities of pollen. 

 This is the hive which will give the heavy surplus, and the 

 other can never compete with it, even though it has twice the 

 population. Of course excessive breeding can be to a certain 

 extent modified by contracting the size of the brood nest, but 

 ne\'ertheless the actual working force will not be in excess 

 until the season is far advanced. 



We must now consider the causes of such a wide difference. 

 They are many, one of the first being that the queen may be 

 stimulated to breed too late in the autumn ; consequently she 

 will be late to begin breeding the following season. The hive 

 may ha\e been short of stores, or the combs so overloaded in 

 early spring that there is really no chance for the bees to 

 develop the brood nest. Perhaps they were thrown back by 

 being too much exposed, instead of having warm material 

 above them. In either case an early hatching of young bees 

 would be out of the question ; and these are the mainstay, 

 compensating for the loss of many veterans when frequent 

 flights become necessary. Consequently the best powers of 

 the queen are not expended before the season opens. 



To obtain good Stock, 



it is absolutely necessary that one keep only the very best 

 queens — young, highly prolific and well developed. When I 

 mention young, I mean just what I say. How wasteful and 

 unnecessary ! you say ; but I assert as a fact that to enable 

 one to keep his stock generally in the highest state of efficiency, 

 he must retain no queens that have seen their second summer. 

 Take a queen raised even so late as August ; she will be in 

 full profit the following season : keep her till another season 

 and her colony will be hardly second-rate. 



To be prolific a -queen must not simply keep pace with her 

 workers while building up in preparation for the season, but 

 must actually force them to make room for her. Such queens 

 are to be had, and with them no "brood spreading" by the 



