FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 79 



qreen in the left-hand margin has a hne drawn through it, 

 and the birth-year of the new queen is written under it. 

 If I find a cHpped queen in the hive, then the entry is, ''q 

 cl," which means the queen was already clipped. It 

 might not seem important to enter that the queen was al- 

 ready clipped, but if I do not find her the first or second 

 time looking over the combs I leave it till another day, 

 leaving a blank after the date, and that keeps me in mind 

 of the fact that I have not yet seen the queen. 



After clipping the wing of the queen I put her on 

 the top of a frame directly over the brood-nest. If you 

 hold her on your finger over the brood-nest she displays 

 a great degree of perverseness and persists in crawling 

 up your hand, right away from her proper home. So I 

 let her crawl upon a leaf, little stick or other object, lay 

 this on the frames, and she will directly go down into the 

 cluster. 



Xot always, however. Too often she will run about 

 over the tops of the frames, and even over the side of the 

 hive, and when thus excited there is some danger she may 

 be balled when she gets down in the hive. So I like bet- 

 ter to have a frame of brood covered with bees, lying flat, 

 or held flat by an assistant, and then I drop the queen 

 right among the bees on the middle of the comb. 



On this first visit I also generally enter in the rec- 

 ord-book the amount of brood present. If the record is 

 "2 br," or "3 br," it means that two combs or three combs 

 are fairly well filled with brood — at least half filled with 

 brood. If the record is "br in 2,'' that means that brood 

 is found in two combs, but that at least one of them is 

 less than half full. So you will see that "br in 3" might 

 be a good deal less than "2 br," for "2 br" might mean 

 two very full combs, and at the least will be as much as 

 one very full comb, while "br in 3" may mean that there 

 is only a nttle spot of brood in each of three combs. 



Any other item that needs especial mention will be 

 recorded, but generally there is no record made beyond 

 those mentioned. 



