THOUSAND ANSWERS 
235 
A. In the proper sense of the word I doubt that a queen is 
ever superseded in winter. If a queen is lost, they may try to re- 
place her almost any time. Your queen is a drone-layer, and so 
worthless. 
Q. What causes supersedure when everything apparently 
looks in good condition. September 2 I had a swarm go out, and 
upon examination of the hive I found that they had superseded 
their queen (which was of this year’s stock), and there were also 
four other virgins in the hive. I knew it was too late for a profita- 
ble swarm, so I pinched the heads off of all but one queen, de- 
stroyed all remaining cells, and then put the swarm back in the 
same hive. Was this right? Everything is going along smoothly 
at this date (Sept. 5.), and the new queen is laying: 
A. You ask what causes supersedure when everything appar- 
ently looks all right. That “apparently” is probably the answer. 
A queen may be in some way at fault, whether a few days or a 
few years old, and you may see nothing wrong, but some way the 
bees know about it. It is not entirely clear, however, from what 
you say, whether this was not a case of regular swarming, rather 
than supersedure. In any case, you did well to do as you did. 
Q. How is it that bees neglect to supersede their old queen 
when there are drones to mate with the young queen, as this has 
happened to me several times late in the fall? 
A. If I understand correctly, you have had queens die in late 
fall or early spring when there were no drones, and your question 
is why they didn’t supersede them earlier, when plenty of drones 
were on hand? I don’t know. It is possible that some accident 
may befall a queen, and of course the bees could not foresee this. 
It would seem that bees recognize the trouble when a queen be- 
gins to fail, and supersede her; and it is possible to conceive a 
case in which there was no sign of failure while drones were still 
present, but an unusually rapid failure after they were gone. The 
fortunate thing is that such cases are rare; nearly always a queen 
is superseded with abundance of drones present. 
Swapping Combs. — Q. Would what is called “swapping combs,” 
i. e., taking a frame of comb or foundation from the surplus-box, 
and exchanging it for a frame of brood, tend to get the bees to 
work in the super and also tend to prevent swarming? 
A. It would tend to start the bees to work in the super, but 
would not do much to prevent swarming. 
Swarm-Box. — Q. How can I use a swarm-box as mentioned in 
“First Lessons in Beekeeping?" 
