NATURAL INCREASE. 
167 
step in, and direct the production of queens, if he is 
to secure qualities which are to him, as a honey-pro- 
ducer, of the highest value. 
But to return to our cast. A yet neater plan of 
preventing after-swarms, which is, unlike the fore- 
going, applicable to hives with fixed combs, as well 
as others, is possible if we have supernumerary queens. 
Giving a fertile mother to a colony that has cast a 
prime (or first) swarm will cause the queen-cells to 
be cut down, and so prevent further trouble. So 
ready are colonies, under these conditions, to accept 
a new queen, that even unimpregnated ones may be 
run in at the entrance (see “ Queen Introduction ”), 
within an hour or two of the swarm issuing, with 
perfect safety. The princesses, then very immature, 
are, as a result, destroyed. 
In the busy season, the bee-keeper cannot do all 
that he would, and casts will occasionally occur, and, if 
properly treated, may be made into capital stocks, for, 
in some respects, they are even superior to prime 
swarms, which consist largely of old bees whose term of 
existence is rapidly running out; and so the 20,000 
individuals, or thereabouts, that we hive, will have 
decreased, possibly, to 10,000, or even less, by the end 
of three weeks, when additions will commence from 
brood hatching. An after-swarm, on the contrary, con- 
tains a vast preponderance of young bees which were 
too frail, at the time of the first exodus, to take part in 
it ; and these, having life before them, are not nearly 
so much thinned, at the expiration of the month which 
must elapse before new bees are added, as is the swarm 
at the less period above referred to. It will be remem- 
