116 INCREASE 
in the hands of expert bee-keepers and under favorable conditions 
than otherwise. 
Mr. Miller describes his method in “Gleanings in Bee 
Culture” as follows: 
A colony to receive a queen has the entrance reduced to about a square 
inch with whatever is convenient, as grass, weeds, rags, or wood, and then 
about three puffs of thick white smoke—because such smoke is safe—is 
blown in and the entrance closed. It should be explained that there is a 
seven-eighth-inch space below the frames, so that the smoke blown in at the 
entrance readily spreads and penetrates to all parts of the hive. In from fif- 
teen to twenty seconds the colony will be roaring. The small space at the 
entrance is now opened; the queen is run in, followed by a gentle puff of 
smoke and the space again closed and left closed for about ten minutes, when 
it is reopened and the bees allowed to ventilate and quiet down. The full 
entrance is not given for an hour or more or even until the next day. 
The queen may be picked from a comb and put in at the entrance with 
one’s fingers, or run in from a cage just taken from the mails, her attend- 
ants running along too. The result is the same. 
If directions are followed explicitly Mr. Miller claims that 
results will be as good or better than with any other plan. The 
author has given the plan a limited trial with good success, but 
it was during a honey flow when conditions were so favorable 
that there was little ditticulty in introducing by any method. So 
many failures have been reported by experienced bee-keepers 
that the novice is cautioned against placing too much confidence 
in it to begin with. It will be safer for him to follow the direc- 
tions on the cage in which his queens are received until he has 
had considerable general experience. 
During a good honey flow when the bees are storing heavily 
there is little trouble in introducing queens by anv method. On 
one occasion the author returned home after an extended absence 
and with but a few hours time introduced seventeen queens, 
many of which were given to strong colonies to replace the queens 
already in the hives. As it was necessary to leave again shortly, 
time was an object and there was no opportunity to leave the 
colonies queenless for even a few hours. The hives were opened 
and as fast as the queens were found they were removed and the 
new queens run in between the frames and the hives closed again. 
The bees had been given a little smoke to quiet them when the 
