FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 189 



part of that colony will seal the doom of the queen, and 

 oflf will come her head. Very likely a young laying 



Fig. 63.— Super-Filler. 



queen will take her place after the bees have been queen- 

 less a week or ten days, all cells being killed at the time 

 the queen is killed and at the time the new queen is given. 



SUPERSEDING OF QUEENS. 



But old age will not be one of the reasons that will 

 always decide the death of a queen. Some queens do 

 excellent work in their third year, and in rare cases in 

 their fourth. At any rate, if quite old they will pretty 

 surely be superseded by the bees about the close of the 

 harvest, and if the stock is good the chance for a suc- 

 cessor equally fjood is not bad, and unless it be conven- 

 ient for me to give them a young queen that I think will 

 be an improvement, the matter of superseding is left to 

 the bees. An item of some interest is the fact that when 



