FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 181 



to look further. No such slipshod work will answer here. Every 

 comb in the hive must be carefully examined. It may be that 

 not a cell is found in the hive except upon the very last comb 

 lifted out. Neither will it do to examine a comb with all its bees 

 upon it. The bees must be shaken off, so that the cells can be 

 plainly seen. If at the previous overhauling eggs or cells were 

 killed, or if for any other reason it is suspected that the colony 

 is in danger of swarming, then the queen is found, and the 

 comb upon which she is found is put into an empty hive stand- 

 ing near before the bees are shaken off the combs. If any 

 combs were shaken first, it would make it difficult to find the 

 queen. 



DEQUEENING TREATMENT. 



Latterly no one plan of treatment is followed exclusively. 

 It may be the " put-up " or the excluder plan, or it may be 

 dequeening for about 10 days. This dequeening treatment is 

 the one most generally used. The queen is removed, the queen- 

 cells are killed, and in 10 days the queen-cells are again de- 

 stroyed and their own queen returned, or another queen given. 

 Sometimes a queenlessness of a week seems to do as well. At 

 any rate, a queen in a provisioned cage may be given in a week, 

 for it will be a little time before she is out ready to lay. Possi- 

 bly, instead of waiting 10 days and giving a laying queen, a 

 ripe queen-cell or a newly born virgin is given at the time of 

 removing the old queen. This has the advantage that if there 

 is any thing like European foul brood in the case, it may be 

 considered somewhat in the light of a cure. It has the disad- 

 vantage that my assistant is quite strongly opposed to the idea 

 of having a virgin in a honey-hive, lest she should take it into 

 her head to get the colony to swarm out, a thing that may 

 happen once in a great while in reality, and in the imagination 

 of my assistant quite frequently. 



REPLACING WITH BETTER QUEEN. 



On the whole perhaps the most common thing is to replace 

 the removed queen with a young laying queen taken from a nu 

 cleus. This will generally result in I'eplacing the old queen with 



