62 MONTANA EXPERIMENT STATION 



warmth and attention of the center of the brood nest is given the 

 queen cells while the queen is kept from destroying them as she 

 would be liable to do unless under the swarming impulse. 



It will be noticed that, in the last two plans, which in principle 

 are the same, the brood rearing of the colony goes on as under 

 normal conditions. In the first plan outlined there is no brood rear- 

 ing save that of the young queens, and furthermore, all the unsealed 

 larvae are removed for the express purpose of relieving the nurse 

 bees of the care of so much brood, so that they may be able to give 

 all their time and strength to the queen cells being formed. In ad- 

 dition, care is taken to provide an extra force of nurses by giving the 

 colony emerging frames of brood. These conditions seem to be 

 most favorable for the production of well developed queens. 



We pass now to the second operation of queen rearing, that of pio- 

 viding for the care of the young queens and their mating. It would 

 obviously be a great waste to dequeen and use full colonies for this 

 purpose. So what are called nuclei are formed to receive the cells 

 Vvhen they are about ready to emerge. The nucleus box of the most 

 convenient size has been found to be one taking about five frames, 

 each one-third the size of a Langstroth frame. This approximate 

 size has been chosen because of the ease with which a queen can be 

 found and still enough combs are had so that the young queen can 

 organize her brood as in a normal colony. The exact size of 9 1-3 

 inches by 5 7-8 inches has been chosen so that just three of the 

 frames will fit together to form a Langstroth frame, which has 

 been found to be quite an advantage in uniting nuclei with colonies 

 or several nuceli together in the fall for wintering and then, too, the 

 frames can be inserted in a full colony in the spring to be stocked 

 with brood bees. With combs thus stocked the making of nuclei 

 becomes a very simple matter, as they have simply to be set up bees 

 and all. But in the case of nuclei formed by brushing bees from 

 the combs of a full colony, the bees usually have to be confined for 

 a day or two and the boxes set in a dark place, until they become 

 accustomed to the smaller hives, when they may be rowed out in the 

 apiary on benches or blocks of wood, ready for the insertion of ripe 

 queen cells. In this way eight or ten nuclei may be formed by 

 breaking up a single colony or, if preferred, the nuclei may be drawn 

 singly from a number of different colonies without any preceptible 

 decrease in the strength of the latter. The number of nuclei de- 



