392 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



proceed as mentioned in the last paragraph, only before you return 

 the queen with the one frame of brood form what nuclei you wish by 

 taking for each nucleus two frames of brood with adhering bees. 

 Not many bees will return to the old stand, yet there will be enough 

 so that if the queen on the old stand has only one frame of brood 

 the colony will soon build up to respectable strength. 



As a matter of economy, two nuclei may be in one hive. They 

 will not only do as well as if in two separate hives, but they will 

 do better, for there is a decided advantage in the mutual warmth. 

 The greatest difficulty in the case is to have a perfectly bee-tight 

 partition or division board in the middle of the hive. If there is 

 a hole anywhere in, under or at the end of the division board large 

 enough for a bee to crawl through, the two nuclei are likely to 

 unite. Close up the entrance all but an inch or two at each end, 

 so that no bee can enter except at these two places at the ends. Put 

 the frames of brood next to the division board, so that the two nuclei 

 will form a single cluster with the division board in the middle of 

 the cluster. The division board ought not to be more than one- 

 fourth to three-eighths of an inch thick. 



BALLING OF QUEENS. 



If without any preliminaries you put a strange queen into a colony 

 that has a laying queen, or one whose queen has been removed only 

 a few hours, you may count pretty surely that the queen thus intro- 

 duced will be killed. If a strange worker enters a hive and is exe- 

 cuted for its intrusion, the process will be short and sharp, the 

 worker being immediately stung to death. Not so with a queen. 

 One bee will seize it, then another, and another, until there is no room 

 for any more bees to get hold of the queen, and then other bees will 

 seize the bees that have seized the queen, the little cluster holding 

 so firmly together that they are with difficulty pulled apart. This 

 is called balling the queen, and the ball may be as large as a black 

 walnut. When the queen has been balled a sufficient number of 

 hours she will be found "dead, possibly from suffocation, more likely 

 from starvation. 



If you find a queen balled and still alive, you may rescue her if you 

 go at it in the right way. Do not try to pull apart the ball by main 

 force. You may injure the queen, or the bees may sting her. If 

 you throw the ball into a dish of cold water, each bee will do its best 

 to save itself and the queen will be freed. Perhaps a better way is 

 to throw the ball on the ground and blow smoke upon it from a 

 smoker. ITold the smoker some distance from the cluster, so the 

 smoke will be cool when it strikes the bees. If you blow hot 

 smoke upon them, they will pretty surely sting the queen. 



