No 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 393 



Sometimes bees ball their own queen that has been in the colony all 

 her lifetime. This occurs more frequently in the spring. When you 

 open the hive, the bees seem to be frightened, aiid whether to pro 

 tect the queen or for some other reason, they ball her, and if you try 

 to rescue the queen you will make matters so much the worse. Just 

 leave the queen in the ball, close the hive as quickly and quietly as 

 possible, and do not open it again for a day or so, and then you will 

 almost surely find the queen safe and sound. 



INTRODUCING QUEENS. 



Getting a colony of bees to accept a strange queen — introducing 

 a queen, as it is called — is an important matter in bee-keeping. 

 Sometimes you will succeed with scarcely a precaution, and some- 

 times you will fail after taking great precautions. As a rule, beea 

 will accept a strange queen only when they have been long enough 

 without a queen to recognize their queenlessness. It is easier to 

 introduce a queen when bees are busy storing. It is safer to operate 

 in the evening, after bees have stopped flying, for earlier in the day 

 they are on the lookout for robbers, and the queen is more readily 

 recognized as an intruder. Bees that have no brood in the hive 

 from which they can rear a queen are the more ready to accept one. 



In the working season, when bees are busy storing, if a colony 

 has been queenless two or more days, you may take from a nucleus 

 a frame of brood with adhering bees, the queen among the rest, 

 put the frame in the hive with no precaution whatever, and generally 

 there will be no trouble. 



If a queen be rolled in a spoonful of liquid honey so as to be thor- 

 oughly daubed all over, then dropped into a queenless hive in the 

 evening between two frames so close together that she is in no 

 danger of dropping to the floor board, she will generally be accepted. 



Put a queen in a wire-cloth cage, and put the cage in the middle 

 of the brood-nest between two frames, or directly over the top bars, 

 and leave her there about two days. Then, upon opening up the hive, 

 if you find the bees acting in a friendly manner toward her as if 

 trying to feed her, you may release her from the cage. If, on the 

 other hand, they act in a hostile manner as if trying to ball or sting 

 her, leave her in the cage for a day or two longer. 



Perhaps the majority of queens nowadays are introduced by 

 means of cages so prepared that the workers themselves will liberate 

 the queens in the course of a day or two. Most of the queens sent 

 by mail are in cages of this kind. There is an advantage in having 

 the bees themselves liberate the queen, for when the bee-keeper him- 

 self opens the hive to do it, there is more or less excitement, which 

 endangers the queen. 



