Queens sometimes die during the winter and early spring, and since there is no brood from which the bees can replace them, the queenless colonies are "hopelessly queenless." Such colonies are usually restless and are not active in pollen gathering. If, on opening a colony, it is found to be without a queen and reduced in numbers, it should be united with another colony by smoking both vigorously and caging the queen in the queen-right colony for a day or two to prevent her being killed. A frame or two of brood may be added to a queenless colony, not only to increase its strength, but to provide young brood from which they can rear a queen Bee keepers in the North can frequently buy queens from southern breeders early in the spring and naturally this is better than leaving the colony without a queen until the bees can rear one, as it is important that there be no stoppage in brood rearing at this season. =SWARM MANAGEMENT AND INCREASE.= The excessive rearing of brood at the wrong season or increase in the number of colonies greatly reduces the surplus honey crop by consumption. The ideal to which all progressive bee keepers work, when operating simply for honey, is to stimulate brood rearing to prepare bees for gathering, to retard breeding when it is less desirable, and to prevent swarming. Formerly the measure of success in beekeeping was the amount of increase by swarming, but this is now recognized as being quite the contrary of success. The stimulation of brood rearing in the spring, however, makes it more likely that swarming will occur; so that the operator must counteract the tendency to swarm. This is especially true in comb honey production. Very few succeed in entirely preventing swarming, but by various methods the situation can be largely controlled. When a swarm issues, it usually first settles on a limb of a tree or bush near the apiary. It was formerly common to make a noise by beating pans or ringing bells in the belief that this causes the swarm to settle. There is no foundation for such action on the part of the bee keeper. If the bees alight on a small limb that can be spared it may simply be sawed off and the bees carried to the hive and thrown on a sheet or hive cover in front of the entrance. If the limb can not be cut, the swarm can be shaken off into a box or basket on a pole and hived. If the bees light on the trunk of a tree or in some inaccessible place they can first be attracted away by a comb, preferably containing unsealed brood. In these manipulations it is not necessary to get all the bees, but if the queen is not with those which are put into the hive the bees will go into the air again and join the cluster.