192 
DR. MILLER'S 
you figure merely on the honey stored by the colony in which she 
was introduced, the purchase of the queen was a losing operation. 
But that isn’t the only thing to be considered. Even if she lays 
only a very few eggs, if you are lively about it, and from those 
few eggs rear enough queens to requeen all your colonies, that 
stock may be just as good as if the queen had never been injured 
in the mails at all, and as a consequence you have just doubled 
your future crops. In other words, the injury of a queen in the 
mails docs not necessarily injure the stock reared from her. 
Queens Stinging. — Q. Can a queen sting? 
A. If you allow two queens to come together, unless one of 
them is very old, yju will soon learn that they can sting, for one 
of them will soon be a dead queen. The strange part of it is that 
the victor is never injured in these duels. But a queen will never 
sting you. I have handled thousands of queens, and I never knew 
one of them to make the least show of stinging. Nor will a queen 
sting a worker. Just once in my lifetime I knew of one exception 
to this rule, when I saw a queen sting a worker. 
Queen-Trap. — Q. As I have no time to be around at swarming 
time, I am going to put on the queen and drone-trap. Will that 
be right? 
A. It will be all right if you give the proper attention after- 
ward. But merely putting on a trap will not answer. The queen 
will be caught in it, and if you leave her there, there will be a 
young queen in the hive in a week or so, and when she tries to fly 
out to be fertilized she will be caught in the trap, and then you 
will have a queenless colony. You will have to keep watch and 
when the queen is caught in the trap make an artificial swarm, 
or dispose of matters some other way. 
Queens, Two in One Hive. — Q. Wouldn’t I get more honey by 
having two laying queens in a hive; first a hive-body, then a 
super, then a honey-board; next a hive-body, with the second 
queen; lastly a cover? Would the two laying queens fight through 
the honey-board? 
A. The queens could not very well fight, but I don’t think you 
would gain by the plan. One of the queens is likely to disappear 
before long. 
Q. Will two or more laying queens in one hive prevent 
swarming, as told by Alexander? 
A. I think the plan did not pan out very well afterward. 
Queens, Virgin. — Q. How do virgin queens look? 
