188 THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 



transferred to (7, when the bees are in full flight. Other 

 methods still will suggest themselves to the expert. 



To those who have learned to open the hives and 

 remove the combs, and who use but one Apiary, this way 

 of making artificial swarms which I call the piling mode 

 will probably prove to be the best; It does not confuse 

 the bees, by presenting to them a new entrance, or a hive 

 having a strange smell, and retains in the mother-stock 

 adult bees enough to gather water, and attend to ah 1 neces- 

 sary out-door work. In the Apiarian Convention of 1857, 

 which was largely attended, and where the question of 

 artificial swarming with one Apiary, was fully discussed, 

 Dzierzon recommended a method as much like this as the 

 plan of his hives would permit. 



I shall now show how, by means of movable-comb 

 hives, fertile young queens may always be kept on hand, 

 to supply the forced mother-stocks : About three weeks 

 before A (p. 180) is to be forced, take from it, as late in 

 the afternoon as there is h'ght enough to do it, a comb 

 containing worker-eggs, and bees just gnawing out of 

 their cells, and put it, with the mature bees that are on it, 

 into an empty hive. If there are not bees enough ad- 

 hering to it to prevent the brood from being chilled 

 during the night, more must be shaken into the hive 

 from another comb. If the transfer is made so late in the 

 day that the bees are not disposed to leave the hive, 

 enough will have hatched, by morning, to supply the 

 place of those which may return to the parent-stock. A 

 comb from which about one-quarter of the brood has 

 hatched, will almost always have eggs in the empty cells, 

 and if all Ihings are favorable, the bees, in a few hours, 

 will usually begin to raise a queen.* 



* I have known about a tea-cup full of bees, confined in a dark place, to begin, 

 within an hour, enlarging cells foi raising a queen. 



