52 FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



bound the same as the book in which you are now read- 

 ing, it would come to pieces if it should be left out long 

 enough in a soaking rain. Of course a book never should 

 be left out in a rain, but of course it sometimes is. So 

 I want a book that will suffer no greater harm than to 

 have the cover come off if it should be rain-soaked. It 

 must be stitched together through the middle, so that the 

 one set of stitches does the whole business, the first leaf 

 being continuous with the last leaf, the second contin- 

 uous with the next to the last, and so on. 



HISTORY OF QUEENS. 



While the record-book is very important to keep 

 track of the work from day to day, it is perhaps more 

 important for the purpose of tracing the history of 

 queens from year to year. On each page is left a margin 

 of about J4 of an inch. In that margin is put the last 

 two figures of the year in which the queen is born, 

 '99 if she was iDorn in 1899, '01 if in 1901, 

 and so on. In that margin is also found any- 

 thing important to have recorded about the queen. 

 "Very cross" may be in the margin if the workers dis- 

 tinguished themselves in that direction ; "seals white" if 

 the capping of sections was uncommonly white ; "dark" 

 if the workers were unusually dark, etc. Especially am I 

 interested in the memoranda in the margin relating to 

 swarming and storing. You will find sw if the colony of 

 that queen swarmed last year ; no c if no queen-cells were 

 found in the hive during the whole of last season. 2 k ii 

 twice I killed queen-cells that were started. No doubt the 

 printer will feel like putting some periods after those con- 

 tractions. Please don't do it, Mr. Printer, for I never 

 take time to use any such embellishments when making 

 entries. The number of sections stored by the progeny 

 of the queen the preceding year has a place in this mar- 

 gin ; 24 sec if 24 sections were stored ; 160 sec if so 



