QUEENS AND QUEEN-CELLS. 87 



that time, if all goes well, the young queens should 

 have hatched, have become fertilized, and be lay- 

 ing. They can be used as may seem desirable, 

 and a fresh batch of cells given to the nuclei., 



It will be seen that although a queen raiser 

 can breed from his best queen, he cannot select 

 the drones with which the young virgins are to 

 be mated. Much has been written about the 

 fertilization of queens with selected drones, but 

 in a country so thickly populated as our own the 

 thing is practically impossible. Fertilization takes 

 place high in the air, and even if the bee-keeper 

 kept nothing but selected drones in his own apiary, 

 a large proportion of his queens would probably be 

 mated with those which belong to his neighbours. 



When introducing new queens to a colony pre- 

 cautions must be taken, or they may be killed. 

 The usual method is to cage the queen on a 

 comb, placing the cage in the centre of the brood- 

 nest and over a few open cells of honey. Feed 

 the bees gently, and liberate the queen in from 

 twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It will be readily 

 seen on releasing her whether the bees are dis- 

 posed to be friendly or otherwise towards her. 

 If they commence to pull the queen about, or 

 enclose her in a tight mass of bees, a form of 

 attack termed "balling," she must be caged again 

 until they are willing to accept her. 



Another method of introducing, is to enclose 

 the queen in a cage, at one end of which is a 

 quarter-inch hole filled with soft candy. The 



