104 BEES FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT. 



Hatching Brood in Chicken Incubators- 

 Having selected a good strong colony from which to form 

 our nuclei, we should go to it and remove all frames that do 

 not contain brood ; thus crowding the bees somewhat. In the 

 very centre of the brood nest we then insert a frame of 

 sections fitted with full sheets of foundation. Forty-eight 

 hours afterwards we must examine the hive, and if the 

 foundation in the frame of sections has been drawn out and 

 is full of eggs — as it should be — we write on it the date on 

 which it was inserted (so that we may know on what date the 

 brood is due to hatch) and return it to the hive, adding 

 another frame of sections as well, also near the centre of the 

 brood nest, and repeating this operation every two or three 

 days until such time as we find that the frame last inserted is 

 not full of eggs, when we must wait until it is full before 

 inserting another frame. 



So soon as the brood in the sections in the first frame we 

 inserted is capped over, we withdraw the frame, and taking 

 the sections out of it, place them in an ordinary chicken 

 incubator, which should be kept up to a temperature of from 

 85° to 95° Fahrenheit. This is done, not only to relieve the 

 bees in the hive of all further trouble in connection with this 

 brood, and thus enable them to draw out the comb and bring 

 up brood in the six other sections which we shall give them 

 in place of the frame of sealed brood we have withdrawn, but 

 it is for another purpose as well. 



The experience of the merest tyro who has attempted 

 but a few times to artificially increase the number of his 

 hives will have impressed upon him very strongly the fact 

 that the greatest difficulty he has to contend with, in the 

 formation even of large nuclei, is the number of bees 

 which leave the nuclei and return to the old stock or its 

 stand, thereby so depleting the new nuclei of their popu- 

 lation as to bring about failures innumerable. This being 

 so with strong nuclei, how much more is it the case with 

 baby nuclei ? 



It is, therefore, to entirely do away with this difficulty that 

 I find it best to resort to an incubator. The nuclei are then 

 entirely made up of young bees from it, which, no matter 

 how small the lots into which we divide them, will not 



