AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



653 



hatch out, and if the bees have all been 

 hatched a week, and still no eggs, you 

 may begin to be alarmed that your 

 queen has been lost in mating, or other- 

 wise prevented from beginning her 

 work. She may have bad wings, or be 

 defective in some way, and never be 

 any good. In such cases you had better 

 buy a queen from a queen dealer or 

 breeder at once, giving a frame of eggs 

 and larva from your old queen, by swap- 

 ping a frame. This will keep them from 

 running into laying-workers, as we term 

 it, which will be explained in one of our 

 lessons. 



As soon as your queen arrives, tear 

 down all cells started on the comb of 

 bx'ood last given them, and introduce 

 her according to directions that usually 

 accompany the queen. Be very sure 

 they have no kind of a queen, and you 

 will succeed nine times in ten in intro- 

 ducing the queen. You can save all 

 this time and bother by purchasing a 

 queen before the division is made, and 

 introduce the bought queen at the same 

 time you divide, and all will go better. 

 But I gave the whole plan as' above, in 

 case you did not wish to buy a queen, as 

 I would like you to use economy. But 

 it would be economy after all to buy a 

 queen if you made a failure in getting a 

 laying queen. 



Well, dear scholars, if you ever expect 

 to count your colonies by the hundred, 

 you have all these ups and downs to go 

 through with sooner or later, and the 

 sooner you learn to mount the obstacles 

 that are cast in the successful bee-keep- 

 ers' pathway, the better for you. This 

 is why I have led you through all this 

 preamble. 



Now the increase being over for the 

 present, let us get to work and prepare 

 the two colonies for the honey harvest. 

 We will say this dividing was done on 

 March 1st, then you have two months, 

 or until May 1st, to get your bees in tip- 

 top condition to gather the harvest, 

 which is ample time. 



But before we get too far, we will talk 

 about other ways of increase, as this 

 seems to be the subject of this lesson, 

 so, to make it plain, we will jump clear 

 up to a 50-colony bee-keeper at one 

 jump. We do this to get at one of the 

 best modes of increase I ever practiced, 

 and is very good where we run our bees 

 for extracted honey. (See Extracted 

 Honey further on.) 



But in running for extracted honey we 

 ought to have two-story hives, and I 

 like hives that both stories are the same 

 — that is, take full-sized frames. Then 

 at the close of the year, or in time for 



the bees to store ample honey for winter, 

 you can rear a queen-cell for every col- 

 ony you have (see Queen-Rearing), and 

 three days before these cells hatch, take 

 half the frames from the top story and 

 adhering bees, place these eight frames 

 in an empty hive, take it off to a new 

 stand, give cells on the evening of the 

 second day, or morning of the third day, 

 to the queenless colonies, and you will 

 soon have double the number of colonies, 

 and also have all your empty combs oc- 

 cupied, as in warm countries like this it is 

 a big job to get combs through without 

 the moth injuring them, if not ruining 

 them ; then you have had the full benefit 

 of all your bees, as this is a plan where 

 swarming has been kept down, and the 

 bees run for extracted honey. 



In northern countries it is not so hard 

 to keep empty combs over, as freezing 

 weather soon comes after the fall flowers 

 are over, which stops the work of the 

 moth. 



Should any colony, or colonies, miss a 

 queen from any cause, you can unite 

 them with some of your weakest colo- 

 nies, by caging the queen three or four 

 days. This is a splendid and paying 

 way to increase, and gives vigorous colo- 

 nies for next year's work. Then you 

 can go on from year to year making in- 

 crease the same way until you get to 

 your limit, or until you get as many bees 

 as you want. 



We will now consider one other way 

 of increase before we close this lesson, 

 which makes all the plans then that I 

 would use aside from natural swarming. 



This last plan I will only give briefly, 

 as it is not much practiced, but just as 

 good colonies are made in that way as 

 any other. 



Along through the season, at inter- 

 vals, you can take frames of hatching 

 brood from four to eight colonies, or 

 until you get enough combs to form a 

 colony, taking only one frame from any 

 one colony, and you can hardly detect 

 any shortage in the hives drawn from, 

 and at the same time form good and 

 profitable colonies. 



This can be done until the apiary has 

 been gone over, and in two weeks re- 

 peat it, etc., giving queens by some of 

 the plans described in the forepart of 

 this lesson. If this method is practiced 

 while bees are gathering honey, and the 

 newly-formed colonies supplied with a 

 sponge of water and shade, all will go 

 well, and after five days they will have 

 bees old enough to go out after pollen 

 and water, and by the time their queen 

 begins to lay, they will be all right, and 



