1. In this chapter we are attempting to start you at the season of the year when the honey plants will mostly be dead or frost may be expected in eight weeks' time. At that time three fundamental conditions must be present in each colony of bees to obtain a maximum crop of honey the next season. They are: 1, a vigorous queen; 2, not less than sufficient young bees to fill the equivalent of one hive body; 3, fifty pounds of honey, all or part with the colony. We plan to provide those conditions. The supers must be removed now. It is indeed a short (sighted beekeeper who leaves them on too long and attempts to take honey that his bees should have for their own use during the coming winter. Therefore toward the end of your main late summer honey flow, you should take off all of your supers and reduce each beehive to winter proportions. This forces late surplus into the brood nest.

2. If you propose to winter your bees outdoors, we urge that you leave each colony to consist of a bottom board, two hive bodies, and a cover. If you expect to winter in the cellar, we urge you to reduce each hive of bees to the bottom board, one hive body, and a cover. However, if you intend to winter in the cellar, you should save a second hive body containing 20 to 25 pounds of honey at least, and store this away in a dry room, until next spring, when it may be given back to that colony at the time the colony is taken out of the cellar.

3. You will understand the importance of the queen and how she may insure you better honey crops if you always remember that she is really the mother of every bee in her swarm. Like your own mother, she cannot do her best for her family if she is not given just the sort of treatment you would want a mother to have. She must have a water tight house or hive that gives adequate protection against wind and cold. She must have enough honey in the hive to feed her family, just as your mother needed to have enough things in the pantry to set your table. Unlike your mother she must be replaced just as soon as she shows signs of failure from old age. Bees with a failing queen are inclined to swarm more than with a younger queen. No failing queen can lay enough eggs per day before the main honey flow to serve her real purpose at any time.

4. In determining whether or not the queen bee in a hive needs replacing, you should look for the following things: first, make sure that the colony has a queen. You may do this by looking for eggs in the cells of the honey comb in the brood chamber of the hive. Figure 7 will show you how to examine a comb for eggs. If it is late summer when the queen may normally have stopped laying eggs, you may only be able to determine that it is queenright by looking over the combs until you find the queen herself. See Figure 1. In case you cannot find either eggs or queen, do not make up your mind that the colony is queenless without further search. Either close up the hive and look for the queen another day, or run all bees in the hive through a queen excluder as shown in figure 59 and described in paragraph 177. In case all three of these plans fail to find the queen, it is then reasonably safe to assume the colony is queenless. Caution, when examining bees in the fall care should be taken to prevent robbing. Should it start, colonies must not be handled.

5. Your next step is to determine in your own mind whether or not the colony is strong enough to warrant the purchase of a queen with which to requeen it. If the colony does not have sufficient bees to crowd one hive body eight weeks before the end of the season, it will usually be preferable to unite with a fairly strong queenright colony so that you can winter it successfully. If your colony is strong enough to warrant requeening, we urge you to send at once to some reliable breeder of Italian queen bees and to purchase an untested Italian queen bee from him which in the fall will usually cost about 75c each. These queens come through the mail in a little wood and wire cage, which may be used to introduce the queen to the queenless colony. It is quite important that you follow closely the instructions that always accompany these queen cages, or refer to paragraph 179, for to release the queen into the queenless colony by any other means, is almost certain to result in her destruction. While the bees well realize that they are without a mother when they are queenless, the strange odor and the frightened actions of the new queen excite them and they will at such times maul her until she is dead. Italian stock is usually preferred in U. S. A.

6. If, upon careful examination, you determine that the colony is too weak to pay to requeen it, we urge you to unite it at once with any other colony of bees in your apiary that may not have sufficient bees to quite cover all the combs in one hive body but which is queenright. This can be best done by leaving off the cover of the queenright colony and laying a single sheet of newspaper over the top of the hive frames in the queenright colony. Then remove the bottom board from the queenless colony and set the queenless hive body and cover on top of the newspaper. Make a dozen small holes in the paper and the bees will gnaw through in a day or two and should go together without fighting or trouble. Under no circumstances disturb either colony until they are thoroughly united, and use no more smoke in handling either of them during the uniting process, than you find absolutely necessary. In case the temperature is still high enough so that there might be danger of the bees in the top body smothering, you must then poke a few dozen small holes in the newspaper at the time of uniting the colonies. This will allow a sufficient passage of air to ventilate the upper body without allowing the bees to go together too fast.