86 PKACTICAL BEE-KEEPOTG. 



and a usurper at once put into her place, with but little chance of her 

 heing challenged, while still more commonly a queen would be accepted 

 by orphan bees if she be simply well smeared with honey taken from the 

 hive to which she is presented. But experiments such as these only the 

 expert should try. 



Fumigation is occasionally resorted to for introducing queens. Puff 

 ball, well dried, is lighted and placed in some such apparatus as Fig. 58, 

 and by means of the breath or a pair of bellows a stream of air is driyen 

 through the burning puff into the hive mouth. If operating upon a skep 

 a second one inverted should be placed under it to receive the bees, which 

 soon become comatose and fall from their combs, a gentle pat or two 

 shaking them down. The queen is now looked for and removed, when 

 the stranger, with her body guard, is placed in possession of the combs, 

 where she will soon be joined by her then unconscious daughters-in-law. 

 Apiarians are generally of opinion that fumigation is prejudicial, while 

 it certainly is but rarely necessary. Where bees persist in refusing a 

 queen it may become inevitable. We have also used it in changing the 

 queens of swarms of a few weeks old, whose combs have been too tender 

 to admit of drumming. 



So-called systems of Ligurianizing are legion, but in almost every case 



Pig. 58. Fumigator. 



they can only be recommended to the tyro, since they produce hybrids 

 instead of pure bees. Here is an example. Having one Ligurian stock 

 to Ligurianize by it a number of black ones. Drive the Ligurians and 

 one of the black stocks. Reverse the stands of the driven hives, and 

 return the bees at their old stations, destroying the black queen before 

 doing so. The black bees will raise a new queen from the Ligurian eggs. 

 Kepeat the process at intervals of a week with the stock then containing 

 the Ligurian queen ajid the other black stocks in order. The temporary 

 occupation of the Ligurian queen gives time for all the black eggs to 

 hatch and get past the stage in which they can be converted into 

 princesses, Ligurian eggs at the same time being deposited ; but since 

 while queens are flying it is impossible to keep trapping drones from the 

 colonies containing them, hybridisation would occur nineteen times out of 

 twenty, while the new queen is obtained at the cost of twenty-five days' 

 egg laying, a period much reduced by the plans elsewhere given in these 



It has been previously stated that if a queen continue to fail to meet 

 a partner when she again and again flies to secure the responsibilities of 



