124 ONE YEAR AMONG THE BEES. 



take a colony that does not have a queen, or you may remove the 

 queen from any colony that has the proper brood in the combs, and 

 this colony will proceed at once to thus build cells. When these cells 

 are sealed up, and at any time before the first queen hatches out, they 

 must be cut out of the comb and kept entirely separate, for immedi- 

 ately after the first young queen is out, she will hunt up these cells, 

 and tear them open, sting the young queens yet in the cell, and thus 

 destroy them. The proper time to separate the cells is about two 

 days after they are sealed over, which occurs on the eighth or ninth 

 day, which would make the cells ten or eleven days old. They will 

 hatch out in sixteen days, providing the brood was not over three 

 days old from the time the eggs were deposited, but if a day older, 

 they will hatch that much sooner. 



To care for these queen-cells we must form nucleus colonies ; that 

 is, we take one or two frames of bees and brood, and make a small col- 

 ony, containing no queen of course, and engraft one of these cells in 

 the comb, and thus accommodate each queen-cell with one of these 

 nuclei. Full colonies must be drawn upon to form these nuclei, 

 and one colony will make several of them. These cells hatch and 

 the young queens will become fertile and begin laying eggs in ten 

 or twelve days, when they may be removed and introduced into full 

 colonies, or these nuclei containing them may be built up into full 

 colonies. During swarming time is the best time to raise q4eens, as 

 many hives now have a number of natural queen-cells in th[em, and 

 we can utilize them and produce a large number thus. I have a pref- 

 erence for natural cells, but am not able to prove them any better than 

 the others. One drawback to raising queens out of season is the sup- 

 ply of drones. We cannot raise queens without drones ; that is, the 

 queens will not become fertile, and of course are worthless ; but usually 

 there are drones enough retained to answer the purpose. We can pro- 

 duce drones at any time by feeding, but this is rather expensive ; but 

 one thing we can do, and that is retain them, by keeping colonies that 

 have a large number of them queenless, for a queenless colony will 

 not kill their drones. 



FRAMES OF COMB FOUNDATION. 



Figure 20 shows something that I think is of considerable value 

 and importance to the bee-keeper. Here are two frames of comb 

 foundation. Frame No. 1 shows a sheet of raw foundation just fas- 

 tened into the frame, and the bees have not done any work on it. 

 No. 2 shows a frame of foundation that the bees have worked on just 

 ten hours. It was placed in a strong colony in the morning, and 

 taken out in the evening. Examine it closely, and see how perfectly 

 these cells have been drawn out. In these ten hours the cells were 



