390 ^ Modern Bee-Farm 



It has been considered that practical bee-keeping owes 

 much to science, and that scientific bee-keeping owes 

 'ittle to practice. What is science but ascertained know- 

 ledge, gained by the continued practice of ages, the good 

 being consolidated, while the chaff has been expelled ? 

 Correct practice alone constitutes and establishes true 

 science. 



By a careful experiment I have found there are 3,500 

 worker bees to the pound. Queens will live from three to 

 four years ; drones, three months ; workers during summer, 

 six weeks, and through the quiet months of winter six 

 months. 



Fertile workers are not often troublesome except in the 

 queen-raising apiary. When they persist in .laying in 

 nuclei, do not attempt to give virgin queens, but at once 

 supply a good fertile queen on a comb of brood, with 

 accompanying bees ; this also being the very best and 

 simplest cure where they are found in stocks of greater 

 strength. The worker deposits eggs in a very irregular 

 manner, sometimes a dozen or more in one cell ; but this 

 must not be confused with the work of a young or prolific 

 queen, which because of limited room or too small a 

 nupiber of bees will often lay several eggs in a cell. 



Where eggs of fertile workers are placed in worker cells, 

 many of the larvae die before reaching maturity, otherwise 

 the cappings are much raised above the surface, as with 

 normal drones ; and those that do hatch appear equally as 

 perfect as the latter, though, of course, dwarfed in 

 appearance. 



While I have had ample evidence to show that bees are 

 able te retard the development of both eggs and larvae by 

 withholding food ; where a colony has been queenless for 



