272 QUEEN REARING. 
less and without brood for ten hours, Mr. Alley having no- 
ticed that the eggs may be destroyed if given to a colony 
just made queenless. 
This method is probably the most expeditious and the 
cheapest that can be followed, for raising a large number of 
queens; but we would hardly advise Apiarists to use as 
small nuclei as Mr. Alley does (5 combs, 44 inches square). 
The stronger the colony in which a queen israised, the better 
the queen. 
529. As it happens very often, that more queen-cells 
are raised than are needed immediately, and as the bees 
usually destroy all after the first one has hatched, Apiarists 
have devised queen-nurseries to preserve the supernumer- 
ary cells until needed. Itis not safe to leave the queen- 
cells under the control of the bees after ten days, as a queen 
may hatch at any time. 
There are several ways to make queen-nurseries. Messrs. 
Root, Hayhurst, Heddon and Hutchinson, warm their nur- 
series with lamps, while the nurseries used by Messrs. Alley, 
Demaree and others, are placed in well populated hives. 
530. The lamp-nursery is a doubled-walled tin box,* 
of the right size to receive the breeding frames. The space 
between the walls and the bottom is filled with water, anda 
kerosene lamp is lighted under it, with the flame about one 
foot from the bottom of the box. The temperature of this 
lamp-nursery is regulated by raising or lowering the flame, 
and is kept between 0° and 100°. The combs containing 
the sealed queen-cells are placed in this box, and if the 
brood in the combs is all of the same age, every queen will 
hatch, at least, five days before any of the workers. These 
queen-cells have to be examined every few hours, for the 
first queens hatched would destroy the others. 
The Alley queen-nursery is composed of a number of small 
* Mr. Hayhurst, of Kansas City, who is ove of the most successful Western 
queen breeders, uses & galvanized iron nursery, packed in a chaff case. 
