76 ALEXANDER'S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 



made queenless. These we insert near the center of their brood, and 

 they will soon build them out into as nice cells as we ever saw. Then 

 about two days before these cells are ready to hatch we kill the re- 

 maining old queens; then we tier up with two hives of combs all the 

 queenless colonies we have. But be sure you divide the combs of brood 

 and honey that are in the hive below about equal so each one of the 

 three will have some brood and honey. Then insert one of these nearly 

 ripe queen cells into each one of the hives as they stand on top of each 

 other, and put a queen-excluder between each two hives; also have a 

 separate entrance for each hive that the queen may use when she 

 goes out to mate. You see, aside from the queen the colony has access 

 to each one of the three hives through the excluders. In this way 

 you will soon have three nice young laying queens in nearly every 

 colony that contained your old queens. Then to use up our surplus 

 queen-cells we form nuclei by taking one or two frames of honey or 

 brood and about a quart of bees, and put them into an empty hive, 

 and set them near the hive we take the brood and bees from so as to 

 give them back to the old colony as soon as the young queen is mated. 

 In this way we have no trouble in rearing and in having fertilized 

 all the young queens we care for to make our increase and supersede 

 all our old queens at the same time. 



After you have practiced this method of rearing queens you will 

 have no trouble in having all you want ready for use for early increase 

 some time before there is any harvest of surplus honey in our Northern 

 States. 



With us this method of rearing early queens is so easy that we 

 frequently have more than we can use. Sometimes we have 30 or 

 more full colonies in our apiary that contain two or three laying queens 

 each, nearly all summer, until we can find or make a place to use 

 them. They make a fine colony to draw brood from. When there are 

 two or three good queens in a three-story hive the bees all work from 

 one entrance as one colony; for as soon as the young queens commence to 

 lay we close up the entrance that was made for them to fly from, and 

 they all work together. 



Some of you may want to know what I would do if my queens 

 were all young and I had none I cared to kill. In that case I would 

 do the same with the colonies as in the case with the old queens, only 

 I would save these younger queens in nuclei until I could use them In 

 making increase. 



We manipulate our bees so much through May and June that it 

 is no uncommon thing for us to make 100 or more new colonies, mostly 

 nuclei, to-day, for some special purpose, and then in a few days unite 

 the most of them again with other colonies. We can do this very 

 easily, as we use our common hives and combs for all this work. 



I have made some assertions as to what might be made from 100 

 colonies in a year providing we gave them the best of care. I have 

 received some letters that show the writers think I am in a tight place. 



