FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 231 



Upon a hive containing a colony had been piled four 

 stories of empty combs for safe-keeping. To make sure that 

 the bees would not neglect the care of the most distant combs, 

 1 put a frame of brood in the upper story. A tew weeks later 

 I found a laying queen m the upper story with the old queen 

 still below. The bees that had gone up to that frame of brood 

 were so far from the queen that they had reared a queen of 

 their own. A hole in the upper story had allowed the flight of 

 the young queen without invading the domains of her mother. 

 For those who produce extracted honey this plan might be 

 used to advantage. 



UNQUBENING COLONIES TO STAET CELl.S. 



I have reared good queens by the old and simple plan of 

 taking away the queen of a strong colony. Of course this must 

 be a choice queen. Previous to the removal of the queen the 

 colony is strengthened. Frames of well-advanced brood are 

 from time to time given from other. colonies until it has two — 

 perhaps three — stories of brood. None of this brood, however, 

 is given less than five or six days before the removal of the 

 queen. The queen is taken with two frames of brood and ad- 

 hering bees and put on a new stand in an empty hive, an 

 empty comb and one with some honey being added. 



TIME TO START NUCLEI. 



In nine or ten days from the removal of the queen it is 

 time to break up the queenless colony into nuclei. It might 

 generally be left till a day or two later before a young queen 

 would come out to destroy her baby sisters in their cradles, but 

 it is best to take no chances. If it were true, as formerly be- 

 lieved, that queenless bees are in such haste to rear a queen 

 that they will select a larva too old for the purpose, then it 

 would hardly do to wait even nine days. A queen is matured 

 in fifteen days from the time the egg is laid, and is fed 

 throughout her larval lifetime on the same food that is given 

 to a worker larva during the first three days of its larval exist- 

 ence. So a worker larva more than three days old, or more 

 than six days from the laying of the egg, would be too old for 



