AUTiriOIAL SWARMING. 217 



SO that the bees may not become too uneasy during their 

 confinement. I accomplish this by shutting up their en- 

 trance, and replacing their front board, just as though I were 

 intending to put them into winter quarters. 



These small colonies I shall call nuclei, and the system of 

 forming stocks from them, my nucleus system ; and before 

 I describe this system more particularly, I shall show other 

 ways in which the nuclei can be formed. If the Apiarian 

 chooses, he can take a frame containing bees just ready to 

 mature, and eggs and young worms, all of the worker 

 kind, together with the old bees which cluster on it, and shut 

 them up in the manner previously described ; even if he 

 has no sealed queen to give ihem. If all things are fa- 

 vorable, they will set about raising a queen in a few hours. 

 I once took not more than a tea-cup full of bees and confined 

 them with a small piece of brood comb in a dark place, and 

 found that in about an hour's time, they had begun to en- 

 large some of the cells, to raise a new queen ! If the Apiarian 

 has sealed queens on hand, they ought, by all means, to be giv- 

 en to the nuclei, in order to save all the time possible. 



I sometimes make these nuclei as follows. The suitable 

 comb with bees &c., is taken from a stock-hive, and set in an 

 empty one, made to stand partly in the place of the old hive, 

 which, of course, must previously be moved a little on one 

 side. In this way, I am able to direct a considerable num- 

 ber of the bees from the old stock to my nucleus, and the 

 necessity of shutting it up, is done away with. If the bees 

 from the old stock do not enter the small one, in sufiicient 

 numbers, I sometimes close their hive, so that the returning 

 bees can find no other place to enter. My object is not to 

 catch up a large number of bees. For reasons previ- 

 ously . assigned, I do not want enough to build new comb, 

 but only enough to adhere to the removed comb, and raise a 

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