THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



73 



And now we come to the last propo- 

 sition of controlling the mating- of our 

 queens. With these baby nuclei, of 

 which a man may carry from 15 to 25 

 on his arm like a load of stove-wood, 

 or hundreds of them may be piled into 

 a spring- wagon, don't you see how 

 readily handled, how really transport- 

 able they become? With a load of sev- 

 eral hundred of these, we pick up our 

 colony of choicest drones, go out upon 

 the prairie two and a half or three 

 miles from anybody's bees, or house, 

 distribute our little boxes, and liberate 

 our drones. Possibly the next day 

 every queen will mate, iind that to the 

 very drones of our choice. All these 

 can be brought in, and, if so desired, 

 queens and drones of another race may 

 then be mated on the same ground. 



CONSTRUCTION OF THE NUCLEUS 

 BOXES. 



The construction of the boxes is very 

 simple, yet they form a very important 

 part of this method. Imagine two 

 little trays, % inches deep, llX inches 

 long and \% inches wide, hinged at 

 the bottom with leather strips, and 

 made so as to clamp a little frame (of 

 the same dimensions) of honey, be- 

 tween them, so tightl}^ that it cannot 

 move. The outside surface of frame 

 becomes a part of the box, and all is 

 held fast by a spring hook and staple 

 at the top. The hook fits so snugly 

 that it goes on with a snap. An en- 

 trance for the bees is made in the end- 

 bar of the frame by boring with a 5-16 

 inch bit through the end-bar of frame, 

 near the lower corner. A little zinc 

 button is used; one end solid zinc for 

 closing the entrance, the other a single 

 queen-excluding slot; and when the 

 button is turned crosswise, the entrance 

 is then wide open. 



To get these little combs of honey for 

 the baby nuclei, frames are made to 

 fit crosswise in an 8-frame, half-depth 

 super, and old combs are transferred 

 into them and given to ordinary col- 

 onies during a honey flow. Of course. 



these may be filled with foundation, 

 but old combs, well iittached, are pref- 

 erable. 



SOME INTERESTING NOTES ON THIS 

 METHOD OF OUEEN-REARING. 



I have 1,000 of these little combs, 

 and 750 of the little boxes, and I be- 

 lieve that, with cells hatching at the 

 proper time, 2,000 or more queens can 

 be mated every thirty days, and a 

 large part of the labor may be per- 

 formed bj' a cheap man; the expert 

 rearing the cells and filling the boxes. 

 My nursery cages are so constructed 

 that 48 fill a standard L. frame. 

 There is wire cloth on each side, and a 

 little waxed, square, wooden cap, to 

 which the ripe cell is attached, exact- 

 ly covers one of the 48 compartments ; 

 a little three-cell piece of drone comb 

 placed in the bottom of each compart- 

 ment, and filled with honey from a 

 common, clean, oil can, furnishes 

 ample food for a virgin queen a week 

 or more, and is just what she needs. 

 Nurseries containing cells, are hung 

 in upper stories of any populous col- 

 onies, with laying queens, instead of 

 queenless colonies as many of our best 

 writers advocate. Queenless bees usu- 

 ally select and nurse a few of the vir- 

 gins and worry the others to death. If 

 placed in colonies with laying queens, 

 no attention is gfven the virgins and 

 the}' seem to fare better. 



I have distributed these little nuclei 

 at 2:00 P. M. and at 4:00 P. M. of the 

 same day found many virgins mated. 

 These freshly mated virgins have been 

 picked up, and introduced to full col- 

 onies, when, in three days, I have 

 found them filling the comb with eggs. 



By a mistake, 36 virgins were caged 

 until 18 days old, and most of them 

 mated within two hours after distribut- 

 ing the nuelei on a nice afternoon. 



While I do not recommend less than 

 the number of bees specified, I have 

 had a queen mated and laying with 

 only ten bees, by actual count I 



