and its Economic Management. 59 



The colony which gained the proper balance of popula- 

 tion at an early date, on the contrary, has much reduced 

 its brood 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 contract- 

 ing the size of the brood nest, but nevertheless 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 have been short of 

 stores, or the combs so overloaded in early spring that 

 there was 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 main- 

 stay, 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 : 



