25J FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



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 C 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 FOB ODT-APIABIES. 



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

 pect to use young queens, we take them from any nucleus that 

 will furnish them, never putting any escort bees in the cage 

 with the queen, and generally one or more extra queens 

 are taken along, for we are never sure that they may not be 

 needed. 



Care is taken that the record book shall always show the 

 condition of each nucleus; so that 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 Tig 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 the 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 queenless long enough to be fully conscious of its queen- 

 lessness. Indeed, I have introduced many queens during the har- 

 vest 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 



