384 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



good for work. No. 2 will thus be deprived of its field bees, but 

 on the other hand it will get all the field bees that belonged to 

 No. 4. In about eight days No. 2 will have a young queen matured, 

 and will send out a swarm. You will now proceed much as you 

 did before. Hive the swarm and put it in the place of No. 2, and 

 put No. 2 in the place of No. 5, putting No. 5 in a new place. The 

 field bees of No. 5 will strengthen No. 2, and in a day or two it 

 will send out another swarm. Proceed as before, putting No. 2 

 in place of No. 6, and so on as long as swarms issue. In this way 

 you have, perhaps, no swarms from 4, 5, etc., but in their place you 

 have swarms from No. 2, all of them having queens of your best stock. 

 When No. 1 swarms, or No. 3, you can treat them the same way. 



There is, of course, the possibility that No. 1 or No. 2 may not 

 be accommodating enough to be among the first to swarm. With 

 box hives you cannot do much to control this, unless it be by feed- 

 ing the one you desire to swarm, but with movable-frame hives you 

 may do much. Take frames of sealed brood from colonies that you 

 do not want to swarm, and give to one of your best colonies, and 

 you can thus strengthen it so as to hasten its swarming, while 

 delaying the swarming of those from which the brood was taken. 

 Of course, when you take these frames of sealed brood, you will 

 merely exchange them for frames that have little or no sealed brood 

 in them. 



QUEEN-REARING. 



Bearing queens has become quite a trade, and some bee-keepers 

 make a business of shipping queens by mail to those who wish to pur- 

 chase. Indeed, so important is the matter of queen-rearing, and so 

 much of a science has it become, that an excellent book has been 

 written which is devoted to that subject, ^'Doolittle on Queen-Rear- 

 ing." Although it may not be desirable for the farmer with only 

 a few colonies to go into the subject fully, he should know enough 

 about it to rear queens at times for his own accommodation. 



When a colony prepares for swai'ming, a number of queen-cells 

 are started, eight, ten, possibly many more. As soon as the first 

 one of these is sealed, the colony is likely to throw off a prime 

 swarm. Six or seven days after this swarm has issued, the mother 

 colony may be divided up into two or more parts, each part being 

 called a nucleus, the word "nucleus" merely meaning a very small 

 colony. (See the subject of nucleus farther on.) 



Perhaps you will generally have enough queen-cells in each nu- 

 cleus without any attention, but not always. Sometimes you will 

 find a large number of queen-cells on one comb, and some combs with- 

 oiit any. So it might happen that if you give the matter no atten- 



