33 



■carried out all the honey, close the hole securely so aa to prevent 

 another swarm from taking up quarters there. 



ROBBING AND ITS PREVENTION. 



Frequently when there is a dearth of nectar, bees are inclined to 

 Tob other colonies, especially those in a weakened condition. Feeding 

 and returning the extracting supers often attract other bees. It is a 

 ■good plan to return the supers and feed in the evening to prevent 

 excitement. When the bees show the slightest inclination of robbing, 

 discontinue manipulations, close the hives, and if necessary contract 

 the entrance as much as weather conditions will permit. The placing 

 of weeds and grass in front of the entrance is an aid to prevent rob- 

 bers from attempting to enter. Always keep honey that is removed 

 from the hives where the bees cannot get to it so as not to incite 

 robbings. 



HOW TO ITALIANIZE AN APIARY. 



The merits and superior qualities of the Italian bees has been dis- 

 cussed in a preceding paragraph. Since this race of bees has been 

 highly recommended by all authorities on bee culture the apiarist 

 often desires information concerning the Italianizing of his apiary. To 

 do this a tested Italian queen should be purchased from some reliable 

 queen breeder and introduced into one of the colonies of the apiary. 

 Since the queen is the mother of the colony, the changing of queens 

 is merely d step in changing the entire race of the colony in a few 

 ■weeks. 



To introduce a queen successfully, it is essential to find the queen 

 to be superseded and destroy her. Either remove the new queen from 

 the cage in which she is received and liberate the accompaning workers 

 ■and replace her in a new cage, or release the workers and allow her to 

 remain in the cage and suspend it between the combs. The mailing 

 cage usually contains a candy stopper which should be exposed to the 

 bees by removing the protecting shield. In the course of several days 

 the bees will liberate her by eating the candy plug. The accompany- 

 ing workers are very rarely accepted by the bees in the colony and 

 may cause the queen to be rejected. There are a number of other 

 methods of introduction practiced by experienced beekeepers but they 

 are not as safe as the cage method. 



After the Italian queen begins active egg laying frames containing 

 her eggs can be given other colonies in which the queen has been 

 renewed. It is best to wait several days after removing the queen in 

 ■order to destroy all the queen cells before introducing the frame 

 containing the eggs, so as to be positively sure that the queen reared 

 is from the select queen and not from eggs laid by the inferior queen 

 destroyed. The bees usually start a number of queen cells. It is 

 therefore desirable to place some protection around all but one cell 

 so as to save every queen that emerges. The remaining queens can be 

 introduced into additional queenless colonies and therefore requeen a 

 number by the queens reared in the one colony. This saves time and 



