118 INCREASE 
likely to become popular because of the fact that most bee-keepers 
will hesitate to subject a queen to such treatment. 
Flour Method.—Dropping the queens into flour has also 
been tried with success in some cases. A combination of the 
flour and smoke methods is also practised successfully at times. 
By this plan a colony is smoked in the manner described pre- 
viously, and just before running the queen into the hive she is 
dropped into a dish of flour. None of these methods seems to 
give the satisfaction under all conditions that the cage method 
does. 
Sure Plan for Valuable Queens.—When one buys a queen 
of more than ordinary value and is willing to go to some extra 
trouble to insure her safety, there is an old plan of taking from 
strong colonies two or more combs of sealed brood and shaking 
off every live bee. There must be no unsealed brood or it will 
die from lack of nursing. These frames of sealed brood are 
placed in a hive body without a bottom board and this body is 
placed over another colony with ordinary wire screening placed 
over the top to prevent the bees from making trouble, while at 
the same time furnishing plenty of heat to the brood above the 
wire cloth. The queen is placed on top of one of the frames, 
or her cage is opened and she is permitted to run between the 
frames and the cover placed on the hive. The voung bees as they 
emerge will be confined to the upper hive body with the new 
queen and she will shortly be surrounded with a nice little cluster. 
If desired, after about five days the queen, having been removed 
from the colony below, the wire cloth may be removed and two 
or three days later after the colony has become accustomed to the 
new queen the bees can all be shaken from the upper combs and 
the upper hive body removed. If desired to make a new colony, 
the upper hive body can be removed to a new stand and addi- 
tional frames of brood given to strengthen them. 
This is about the only plan that is regarded as entirely sure 
under all conditions. In this case there are no old bees in the 
