242 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



siderable number, and it saves time on the whole !:ot to 

 be in too much of a hurry. If no eggs are found a coml^ 

 of young brood is given as an encouragement to start 

 the young queen to laying, and a day or two later, if 

 queen-cells are started on this young brood, a mature 

 queen-cell is given, 



KEEPING BEST QUEEN IN NUCLEUS. 



Instead of having my best queen in a strong colony, 

 as in the plan just given, she is usually kept in a two- 

 frame nucleus throughout the summer, the nucleus being 

 strengthened into a full colony in the fall for wintering. 

 One object of this is to make the queen live longer. It 

 is generally understood that a worker lives a longer time 

 if it has little work to do, and probably the same is true 

 of a queen. As laying eggs is her w^ork, the less the num- 

 ber of eggs she lays the longer she ought to live, and i'l 

 a nucleus she lays a smaller number of eggs than in a 

 strong colony. 



There is another reason for keeping her in a nucleus. 

 Some who have tried to have comb built in the colony 

 containing their best queen complain that they can get 

 only drone-comb built. That may be avoided by filling 

 the frame with w^orker-foundation, but the better Avay is 

 to keep the colony with the queen so weak that only 

 worker-comb will be built. In a nucleus only worker- 

 comb wall be built. 



STARTING BROOD FOR CELLS 



Having my breeding queen in a two-frame nucleus, 

 I take away one of the combs, and in its place put a 

 frame in which are two small starters four or five inches 

 long and an inch or two wide. One of these starters is 

 prt about four inches from each end (Fig. 86). The 

 nucleus must be strong enough in bees so that a week 

 later this frame wall have a comb built in it that will fill 

 most of the frame, the comb being fairly well filled wdth 



