62 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



also taken out so as to leave freer working room. This 

 one frame may be put in an empty hive standing con- 

 venient ; or it may be leaned against the hive being oper- 

 ated on, or against an adjoining hive. If the dummy was 

 on the near side, then the frames are all pushed toward 

 me, two or three being started at a time, and when all 

 are started the tool is pushed down between the farther 

 frame and the side of the hive, and all the frames at 

 one push shoved toward me enough to give plenty of 

 room at the farther side. If the frames are Hoffman (a 

 few hives contain Hoffman frames) then it is necessary 

 to start each frame separately before it can be lifted out. 



WATCHI^Xr FOR OUEEX. 



As the frames are being handled, the thing that 

 receives closer attention than anything else is to see the 

 queen so as to know whether she is clipped or not. For 

 if a colony should have an undipped queen there is a fair 

 chance that it might swarm and decamp ; and it is pos- 

 sible that almost any colony may have superseded its 

 queen the previous fall, leaving it with an undipped 

 queen. 



IMPLEMENT FOR CLIPPING. v/ 



If the queen is undipped, of course I clip her. Nearly 

 always I use a pair of scissors for clipping, although I 

 have tried a knife. The strongest argument in favor of 

 the knife is that a knife is always on hand. But it is as 

 easy to have a pair of scissors on hand. They may be 

 tied to the record-book, and the record-book is sure to be 

 always on hand. Most of the time I have had a pair 

 of embroidery scissors tied to my record-book with a 

 string long enough to allow the scissors to be freely used, 

 but I have been surprised to find that much larger scis- 

 sors will do very good work. Latterly I have used a 

 common pair of gentleman's pocket scissors, and I am 

 not sure but I like them as well as the embroidery scis- 



