16 



as "shook swarming" which is accompHshed in the following- 

 manner: Shake most of the bees from the brood into a new hive 

 which has been placed on the old stand. In the box place either 

 full frames or foundation or pieces of foundation as starters. It 

 thfe original hives had supers on it these may be given to the 

 shook swarin. Some bee-keepers consider it best to give 

 the bees only starters, hence they store honey in the supers. 

 Under these conditions the queen has only a small number of cells 

 in which to lay and there is no possibility of a second swarm. If 

 bees will not accept these quarte'rs they may be induced to remain 

 in the hive by supplying them with a frame of uncapped brood. 

 This artificial swarming is often practised when comb honey is 

 being produced. The old brood chamber may be broken up and 

 given to nuclei or it may be left to develop a queen. 



CLIPPING OF QUEENS. 



Some bee-keepers practice the clipping of queen wings. This 

 is done for two reasons, — to tell the age of queens and to prevent 

 the queen from flying away with the swarm. As soon as a queen 

 returns from her virgin flight and begins to lay eggs, one of her 

 wings is chpped and a record made of it. At the end of a year 

 another wing is clipped and so on, each clipped wing indicating a 

 year of age. Thus one can tell the age of a queen at a glance. By 

 using such a method it is easily seen whether the old queen has been 

 superseded by one of her daughters. If there is no distinguishing - 

 mark on the old queen, such as a clipped wing, it is impossible to 

 tell if she has been replaced by a young queen. When a swarm 

 comes off with a clipped queen the bees fly away from the hive and 

 circle, waiting for the queen to join them, or to alight so that 

 they may cluster around her; if she has clipped wings she cannot 

 fly and the bees return to the stand. If the queen is found by the 

 apiarist and she is put in a conspicuous place where the bees can 

 see her, they will cluster around her and the swarm is then hived, 

 or she may be caged and given to a queenless colony in which case 

 the bees will return to the old stand. To prevent a seconds warm- 

 ing from the old hive all the queen cells but one should be 

 destroyed, 



BREEDING QUEENS. 



Good breeding queens are those which produce the greatest 

 number of bees, which in turn, produce the greatest amount of 

 honey. In selecting a good breeding queen there are a number of , 

 points to be considered. Do their bees produce a surplus of 

 honey? Are they hard to handle? Do they sting readily? Have 

 they good color? Generally speaking bees with plenty of yellow 

 are good workers. After deciding upon a good breeding 

 queen she may be taken away from her colony leaving 

 it queenless. This will force the bees to make queen cells. If 

 one does not wish to use his strongest colony for the production 

 of queen cells he may select a frame containing young larvae and 

 eggs from this colony. This frame is then given to another 



