286 FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



honey will be toward the center of the hive. This will en- 

 courage the bees to cluster in that direction, thiis con- 

 centrating the warmth of the three nuclei. 



UNITING NUCLEI. 



But the hives with three strong nuclei and three 

 queens will be exceptional. Some will have only two 

 queens, some one. If a nucleus hive has in it only one 

 queen, it may be that a full hive is set in place of the nu- 

 cleus hive, the contents of the three apartments of the 

 nucleus hive put into this full hive, and, if necessary, 

 enough nuclei added from elsewhere to make a fair col- 

 ony. If none of the nuclei in any one nucleus hive be 

 sufficiently strong where there is only one queen in the 

 hive, then the nucleus with the queen is likely to be put 

 in some nucleus hive that has contained only two queens. 

 In some cases one of the division-boards is taken away, 

 making one of the compartments large enough to receive 

 five frames, besides the other with the three frames. Thus 

 the nucleus in the larger compartment may be built up to 

 a tolerably fair colony. 



Thus you will see that there is little or no destroying 

 of queens, the effort being to have each queen supported 

 by a good force of bees, considering the size of her com- 

 partment. No attention is paid to the matter of trying to 

 make bees stay where they are put. If they don't like to 

 stay they don't need to; they'll count somewhere. But as 

 they are mostly queenless bees that are moved, they are 

 not bad about returning. 



DOUBLE HIVES FOR WINTER. 



Not only have I wintered nuclei two and three in a 

 hive, but a few years ago I had considerable experience 

 in wintering full colonies in double hives. If I had not 

 changed from ten-frame to eight-frame hives I should 



