The Townsend Bee Book 77 
in the day after the bees had stopped flying, there might be, per- 
haps, a cupful of bees that would crawl out of the entrance, for 
they are quick to realize that they are no longer prisoners, and the 
glad tidings go through the hive like magic. However, since it is 
so late that the bees will not fly, there will be practically none that 
will go back to the old stand. By this time the young queen has 
hatched, and the bees soon begin to carry out dead bees, etc., and 
to clean house generally. In other words, things have changed 
suddenly, for the bees that were prisoners, and were thinking of 
nothing but trying to get out, now begin to think about keeping 
house, and during the first night of liberty much is done along 
this line, sc that, when morning comes, and the bees take their first 
flight, they no longer try to go back to the old location, but mark 
the new one, so that but very few go back. The consequences are 
that the nucleus will be in good condition, and very thrifty, when 
it might otherwise have been almost a failure. 
In making nuclei with this Somerford plan we start a few 
artificial queen-cells at the time of making the divisions, which 
cells are from our best stock, so that if, for any reason, extra cells 
are wanted they will be on hand. It sometimes happens that it is 
convenient to use a colony for increase that we would not care to 
breed from, and it is less work to make artificial cells than to cut 
them from one comb and transfer them to another one, as would 
have to be done if following the Somerford plan, for many times 
all the desirable cells will be on only one or two combs of brood. 
Furthermore, only a few of the cells in such colonies will be good 
enough to use, the inferior ones being torn out when the division 
is made. 
HOW THE QUEEN-CELLS ARE PRODUCED 
With the number of colonies that the honey-producer has to 
select from, there is no trouble in picking out colonies for cell- 
builders that are especially adapted to the work. I have found 
that nervous bees are better cell-builders than the more quiet 
strains, so in selecting the cell-building colonies pick out hybrids 
or bees that tend toward a darker-colored strain. After making 
this selection, see that all the cell-building colonies are strong in 
numbers. Then remove the brood and the queen from each, being 
sure, however, that there is plenty of honey left. However, it 
sometimes happens that there is brood in nearly all of the combs 
so that, when these are taken away from them, there will be almost 
no honey left, and thus it will be necessary to give two or three 
frames of stores, filling up the empty space with empty combs with 
