FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 245 



will return to A , making A quite strong again. In 8 or 10 days 

 a young queen will be ready in A to go out with a swarm. Hive 

 the swarm, put it in place of A, put A in place of C, and put (.' 

 in a new place. The field-bees of C will again strengthen A, and 

 in a day or two another swarm will issue. Put the swarm in 

 place of A, put A in place of D, and put D in a new place. 

 Continue this as long as A continues to swarm, and each one of 

 your swarms will have for its queen a daughter of your Italian 

 queen. If you have only five or six colonies, the whole lot may 

 be thus Italianized. 



QUEENS FOR OUT-APIARIES. 



On any day when we are going to an out-apiary and expect 

 io use youD'j queens, we take them from any nucleus that will 

 furnish them, iie^er )3utting any escort bees in the cage ■\\ith the 

 queen, and generally one or more extra queens are taken along, 

 for we are never sure they may not be needed. 



Care is taken that the record-book shall always show the 

 condition of each nucleus; so we always have some idea as to 

 which nucleus will furnish a laying queen, which one needs a 

 cell, and so on. 



INTRODUCING QUEENS. 



A queen may be introduced in a No. 2 provisioned cage, 

 the cage being nailed directly over the brood, as in Fig. 93, or 

 she may be introduced in a No. 3 cage let down between the 

 combs or thrust into the entrance as .already described. Often, 

 however, when it is convenient, I take from a nucleus the frame 

 on which the queen is found, and put frame and all in the 

 queenless hive. If this is done at a time when honey is yielding, 

 there is little or no danger, provided the colony has been queen- 

 less long enough to be fully conscious of its queenlessness. In- 

 deed, I have introduced many queens during the harvest into a 

 colony conscious of its queenlessness, by merely taking out a 

 frame of brood and dropping the queen among the bees on the 

 middle of the comb. If I wish to run no risk whatever, as in 

 the case of a valuable imported queen, I put in a hive without 

 any bees several frames with no unsealed brood, but with plenty 



