84, 



PKACTICAL BEE-KEEPIHG. 



imported one, the box containing her shotild be opened under oaver, as 

 she is likely to fly. This tronble arising in the open air, a little patience 

 will commonly be rewarded by seeing her return to the comb whence she 

 took wing. Place her upon a, piece of card hardly wider than the cage, 

 which is carefully popped over her. Select a tough brood comb, and upon 

 a part of it containing some unsealed honey, after haying driven the 

 bees from the spot by smoke, place card and cage ; slip away the card with 

 caution, for a tiny leg is soon broken, and then with a screwing motion 

 cut the tin rim into the comb down to the midrib, as in Fig. 56. With 

 skeps the cage may be placed in the bung hole and the bees kept about 

 it by the food bottle. We always feed whUat a queen is caged in a frame 

 hive, and believe that it facilitates the 

 introduction, since we rarely find any risk 

 in giving the prisoner Uberty in twenty- 

 four hours. The usual practice, however, 

 is to continue the confinement three days. 

 When the cage is lifted, if the would-be 

 mother-in-law is touched constantly with 

 antennse, whilst the way is cleared for her 

 as she advances, all is well, but if the 

 throng rudely crowd about her, and clam- 

 ber upon her wings an encasement is to 

 be feared, when she had better be re- 

 turned to the cage for another day. The 

 encasement of a queen is always attended 

 with a good deal of noise and uproar, 

 distinctly heard at the hive door. The 

 Fro. 56. Qtjeen Caoe Fixed, fceekeeper may conclude that "all's weU" 

 if quietude reigns after a queen Is liberated, but when circumstances are 

 suspicious the hive should be opened and the regicidal knot broken up, 

 either picking the bees one by one from the mass or dipping the whole 

 into warm water, when the queen escapes with a ducking. Some bee- 

 keepers aasert, and no doubt with truth, that the disturbance occasioned by 

 opening the hive to release the queen diminishes her chance of a favour- 

 able reception, and have, in order to make the opening of the hive 

 unnecessary, invented lorms about which a word or two must be given. 

 We, howevOT, much prefer to watch the action of the bees, and have 

 more than once saved the life of a valuable queen, which certainly 

 never would have been received from circumstances existing in the hive 

 of which we were ignorant. The well known Mr. W. Carr, first in the 

 field, gave us, many years sifice, a cage larger in area than the one 

 already figured, but which is in a similar manner pressed into the 

 comb while a wire drawn out through the feeding hole admits of the 

 pulling of a slide which allowed the queen to pass into the midst of 



