226 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



full colony in the fall for wintering. One object of this is to 

 make the queen live longer. It is generally understood that a 

 worker lives a longer time if it has little work to do, and prob- 

 ably the same is true of a queen. As laying eggs is her work, 

 the less the number of eggs she lays the longer she ought to live, 

 and in a nucleus she lays a smaller number of eggs than in a 

 strong colony. 



There is another reason for keeping her in a nucleus. 

 Some who have tried to have comb built in the colony containing 

 their best queen complain that they can get only drone-comb 

 built. That may be avoided by filling the frame with worker- 

 foundation, but the better way is to keep the colony with the 

 queen so weak that only worker-comb will be built. In a nu- 

 cleus only worker-comb will be built. 



STARTING BROOD FOR CELLS. 



Having my breeding queen in a two-frame nucleus, I take 

 away one of the combs, and in its place put a frame in which 

 are two small starters four or five inches long and an inch or two 

 wide. One of these starters is put about four inches from each 

 end (Fig. 86). The nucleus must be strong enough in bees so 

 that a week later this frame will have a comb built in it that 

 will fill most of the frame, the comb being fairly well filled with 

 eggs and young biood (Fig. 88). It is taken away, and another 

 frame with two small starters put in its place as before. Thus 

 this nucleus will furnish once a week a frame of comb with 

 brood of the best sort for queen-rearing. It will be a day or so 

 after the frame is given before the queen lays in it, so that the 

 brood will not be too old even if the bees were so foolish as to 

 prefer it. 



The comb being new and tender makes it probably an 

 easier job for the bees to build queen-cells upon it; at any rate 

 they always show a preference for such comb, and start on it a 

 larger number of cells than they would on older comb. 



BEES FOR CELL-BUILDING. 



Having now arranged for the right kind of brood and 

 eggs to be ready on the same day of each week, the next 

 thing is to find the right kind of bees to start the cells, not 



