QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 41 



(3) Opening the hi\e as a rule only in the evening 

 during the hour or two preceding sunset. Robbers quickly 

 learn to follow the smoker and will pounce down on a 

 nucleus directly it is opened, and having once gained an 

 entrance, other bees from the robbing hive or hives will 

 soon join them, but darkness puts a stop to their depredations. 



Feeding is best done at dusk. In America soft candy 

 is sometimes used instead of syrup, because it causes less 

 excitement. Fresh nuclei should not be formed when the 

 honey-flow is declining or over. Prospectors are sure to be 

 prowling about then, and they are wonderfully quick in 

 discovering a newly-formed nucleus, which, having no spirit 

 to resist, will be completely overcome in two or three hours 

 by the host of robbers which in a trice follow on the heels 

 of the innocent-looking discoverers. Of course, no honey 

 or syrup should be dropped about the apiary, and the door 

 of the honey-house should be kept strictly closed at all 

 times. A solar wax extractor is not desirable in a queen- 

 rearing apiary : the smell of the wax arouses the robbing 

 instinct. Robbers make robbers, and it is much better and 

 easier to prevent the vice beginning than to try to cure it. 



The nuclei should be examined at least every tenth day. 

 Examinations should not take place in windy weather, for 

 this may induce balling, and consequently the maiming or 

 killing of queens. The combs, when being examined, should 

 be held over the open hive, so that, if the queen drops off, 

 she will not be lost. A card for notes should be tacked on 

 the underside of the roof of each nucleus hive. On this 

 should be written with an ordinary lead pencil at the time 

 the queen or queen-cell was given, her parentage and the 

 date of emergence, and subsequently every event of import- 

 ance — for instance, the estimated date at which laying com- 

 menced and, if the queen is kept long enough, the colour 

 of the workers she produces, and finally the date she is 

 removed, this being followed by a line drawn across the 

 card. 



The queen .should not be removed until most of her 

 eggs have hatched, or many of these will perhaps be 

 destroyed. If she can be left in the hive a few days 

 longer, all the better. When she is taken away, a ripe 

 queen-cell, from which the new queen is due to emerge 



