390 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



steps to rear a quoeu. The more distant the queen seems from them, 

 the more likely they will be to want to rear a queen. If a colony 

 lias two stories of brood combs, or even only a, single comb of 

 brood in the upper story, there being a queen excluder between 

 the two stories and the queen being in the lower story, quite fre- 

 quently the bees will start queen-cells on the brood above. If the 

 queen be an old one that the bees are likely to be superseded shortly, 

 the impulse to rear queens will be stronger. 



While it is not safe to rely on the rearing of queen-cells in the 

 way mentioned, it is tolerably safe to count on the bees rearing 

 queens over an excluder if the cells are first started in a queenless 

 colony. A\'ith an old queen about to be superseded, the per cent, 

 of cells carried to completion will be large. 



Queen breeders who make a business of rearing queens on a large 

 scale make a jiractice now-a-days of using artificial cell cups in 

 which a very young worker-larva is transferred or grafted, generally 

 preceding the larva by a small amount of royal jelly, and a number 

 of such cell cups, perhaps, to the amount of tweut}' or thirty, are 

 fastened on a stick and put in an upper story, when the larvae will 

 be fed in a roj'al manner, and the cells carried on to completion and 

 sealed. To go minutely into the matter would be going outside the 

 purjjose and limits of this little w^ork. 



Of course it should be understood that a number of queen-cells 

 may remain together in safety, but not a number of queens. One 

 queen is all that can be kept in one inclosure, for queens, especially 

 virgin queens, have a deadly animosity- to one of their own kind. 

 If you take aw^ay the queen from a colony, a number of queen-cells 

 will be started, but if you wait about twelve days before opening 

 the hive, you will be likely to find only one queen left. Either the 

 workers have destroyed them, or they have fought it out among them- 

 selves until only one remains. It may be remarked in passing, as a 

 curious fact, that in the combats of queens the victorious queen is 

 not injured in the struggle. When the mortal sting is given by the 

 victor, her vanquished opponent is in such a position that she can- 

 not, or does not, sting her conqueror. So, if you want to save more 

 than one young queen, you should remove the queen-cells about the 

 ninth day, although the tenth day is usually pretty safe. 



NUCLEI. 



While it is practicable to carry on bee-keeping with full colonies 

 entirely, il is many times convenient or economical to have a small 

 number of bees in a hive, a very small colony being called a nucleus, 

 the jtlural of nucleus being irucdi. Nuclei are especially desirable in 

 the matter of queen-rearing. Ten, twenty, or thirty queen-cells may 



