116 INCREASE 



in the hands of expert b^-keepers and under favorable conditions 

 than otherwise. 



Mr. Miller describes his method in " Gleanings in Bee 

 Culture " as follows : 



A colony to receive a queen has the entrance reduced to about a square 

 inch with whatever is convenient, as grass, weeds, rags, or wood, and then 

 about three puffs of thick white smoke — because such smoke is safe — is 

 blown in and the entrance closed. It should be explained that there is a 

 seven-eighth-inch space, below the frames, so that the smoke blown in at the 

 entrance readily spreads and penetrates to all parts of the hive, in from fif- 

 teen to twenty seconds the colony will be roaring. The small space at the 

 entrance is now opened; the queen is run in, followed by a gentle puff of 

 smoke and the space again closed and left closed for about ten minutes, when 

 it is reopened and the bees allowed to ventilate and quiet down. The full 

 entrance is not given for an hour or more or even until the next day. 



The queen may be picked from a comb and put in at the entrance with 

 one's fingers, or run in from a cage just taken from the mails, her attend- 

 ants running along too. The result is the same. 



If directions are followed explicitly Mr. Miller claims that 

 results will be as good or better than with any other plan. The 

 author has given the plan a limited trial with good success, but 

 it was during a honey flow when conditions were so favorable 

 that there was little difficulty in introducing by any method. So 

 many failures have been reported by experienced bee-keepers 

 that the novice is cautioned against placing too much confidence 

 in it to begin with. It will be safer for him to follow the direc- 

 tions on the cage in which his queens are received until he has 

 had considerable general experience. 



During a good honey flov^^ when the bees are storing heavily 

 there is little trouble in introducing queens by any method. On 

 one occasion the author returned home after an extended absence 

 and with but a few hours time introduced seventeen queens, 

 many of which were given to strong colonies to replace the queens 

 already in the hives. As it was necessary to leave again shortly, 

 time was an object and there was no opportunity to leave the 

 colonies queenless for even a few hours. The hives were opened 

 and as fast as the queens were found they were removed and the 

 new queens run in between the frames and the hives closed again. 

 The bees had been given a little smoke to quiet them when the 



