200 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



The following is the best plan for removing the wings from 

 the queens : Every hive containing a young queen should be 

 examined about a week after she has hatched, (see Chapter 

 on Loss of Queen,) in order to ascertain that she has been 

 impregnated, and has begun to lay eggs. Some of the 

 central combs or those on which the bees are most thickly 

 clustered, should be first lifted out, for she will almost always 

 be found on one of them ; the Apiarian when he has caught 

 her, should remove the wings on one side with a pair of 

 scissors, taking care not to hurt her. On examining his hives 

 next season, let him remove one of the two remaining wings 

 from the queen. The third season, he may deprive her of 

 her last wing. Bees always have four wings, a pair on each 

 side. By this plan he will always know the age of a queen, 

 as soon as he sees her. 



As the fertility of the queen generally decreases after the 

 second year, I prefer, just before the drones are destroyed, 

 to kill all the old queens that have entered their third year. 

 In this way, I guard against some of my stocks becoming 

 queenless, in consequence of the queen dying of old age, 

 when there is no worker-brood in the hive, from which they 

 can rear another ; or of having a worthless, drone-laying 

 queen whose impregnation has been retarded. These old 

 queens are removed at a period of the year when their colony 

 is strong in numbers ; and as the honey-harvest is by this 

 time, nearly over, their removal is often a positive benefit, 

 instead of a loss. The population is prevented from being 

 over crowded at a time when the bees are consumers and 

 not producers, and when the young queen, reared in the 

 place of the old one, matures, she will rapidly fill the cells 

 with eggs, and raise a large number of bees to take advan- 

 tage of the late honey-harvest, and to prepare the hive to 

 winter most advantageously. 



