43 § 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING 
and under circumstances which he may deem most de- 
sirable. The answer will a good' deal depend upon the 
management of the apiary. It is admitted that queens 
are generally beginning to fail in their third season, 
and this wall be emphatically true where they are 
required to lay heavily and constantly during the 
spring and summer. Unquestionably, the best results 
cannot be obtained unless the queen is equal to every 
demand in the early part of the season, which is in 
itself a reason for superseding her at the end of 
her second year of work ; and if it be true that we, 
by careful management, are securing queens of 
higher quality than can be, in the nature of the 
case, produced under the swarming impulse, the 
advantage of artificial supercession admits of no doubt. 
The whole bearing of the chapter on “ Queen - 
raising^^ shows that that selection which has had for its 
object the maintenance of the race, does not secure 
so fully the highest interests of the honey-producer 
as he may secure them by wise interference. But if 
our strain of queens is undergoing no improvement, 
and we are not striving to breed out the swarming 
impulse, it must still be remembered that, if the mothers 
of our stocks are allowed to grow aged, the bees may 
be awakened to the necessity of replacing them at 
the wrong period of the year, or when eggs are not 
at command, nor drones existent, and so snatch from 
us the profit our stock might have produced, giving 
us instead the losses of queenlessness or the annoyance 
of a drone-breeder. 
The artificial removal of queens will not be wholly 
determined by age. Unsatisfactory ones, which do 
