and its Economic Management. 43 



nest and large population of young bees supplied. With such an 

 undue proportion of consumers on hand the queen now has it all 

 her own way, and her combs are one mass of brood. 



The colony which gained the proper balance of population 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 

 contracting 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 is 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 mainstay, compensating for the loss 

 of many veterans when frequent flights become necessary. Con- 

 sequently 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 



