fertile Workers Replaced, 245 
hand, by use of a small, delicate pair of scissors, cut off 
about one-half of one of the front or primary wings. This 
method prevents any movement of legs‘or wings, and is 
easy and quick. 
Some bee-keepers—inexperienced they must be—com- 
plain that queens thus handled often receive a foreign scent, 
and are destroyed by the worker-bees, I have clipped 
hundreds and never lost one. 
FERTILE WORKERS. 
We have already described fertile workers. As these 
can only produce unimpregnated eggs, they are, of course, 
valueless, and unless superseded by a queen will soon cause 
the destruction of the colony. As their presence often pre- 
vents the acceptance ‘of cells or a queen, by the common 
workers, they are a serious pest. 
The absence of worker brood, and the abundant and 
careless deposition of eggs—some cells being skipped, while 
others have received several eggs—are pretty sure indica- 
tions of their presence. The condition that favors these 
pests, is continued absence of a queen or means to produce 
one. They seem more common with the Cyprian and 
Syrian bees. 
To rid a colony of these, unite it with some colony with 
a good queen, after which the colony may be divided if 
very strong. Simply exchanging places of a colony with 
a fertile worker, and a good strong colony, will often cause 
the destruction of the wrong-doer. In this case, brood 
should be given to the colony which had the fertile worker, 
that they may rear a queen; or better, a queen-cell or queen 
should be given them. Caging a queen in a hive, with a 
fertile worker, for thirty-six hours, will almost always cause 
the bees to accept her. Shaking the bees off the frames 
two rods from the hive, will often rid them of the counter- 
feit queen, after which they will receive a queen-cell or a 
queen. But prevention is best of all. We should never 
have acolony or nucleus without either a queen or means 
to rear one. It is well to keep young brood in our nuclei 
at all times. Queens reared from brood four days from 
the egg are usually drone layers. 
