62 MONTANA BXPERIMENT STATION 
warmth and attention of the center of the brood nest is given the 
queen cells while the queen is kept from destroying them as she 
would be liable to do unless under the swarming impulse. 
It will be noticed that, in the last two plans, which in principle 
are the same, the brood rearing of the colony goes on as under 
normal conditions. In the first plan outlined there is no- brood rear- 
ing save that of the young queens, and furthermore, all the unsealed 
larvae are removed for the express purpose of relieving the nurse 
bees of the care of so much brood, so that they may be able to give 
all their time and strength to the queen cells being formed. In ad- 
dition, care is taken to provide an extra force of nurses by giving the 
colony emerging frames of brood. These conditions seem to be 
most favorable for the production of well developed queens. 
We pass now to the second operation of queen rearing, that of p1o- 
viding for the care of the young queens and their mating. It would 
obviously be a great waste to dequeen and use full colonies for this 
purpose. So what are called nuclei are formied to receive the cells 
when they are about ready to emerge. The nucleus box of the most 
convenient size has been found to be one taking about five frames, 
each one-third the size of a Langstroth frame. This approximate 
size has been chosen because of the ease with which a queen can be 
found and still enough combs are had so that the young queen can 
organize her brood as in a normal colony. The exact size of 9 1-3 
inches by 5 7-8 inches has been chosen so that just three of the 
frames will fit together to form a Langstroth frame, which has 
been found to be quite an advantage in uniting nuclei with colonies 
or several nuceli together in the fall for wintering and then, too, the 
frames can be inserted in a full colony in the spring to be stocked 
with brood bees. With combs thus stocked the making of nuclei 
becomes a very simple matter, as they have simply to be set up bees 
and all. But in the case of nuclei formed by brushing bees from 
the combs of a full colony, the bees usually have to be confined for 
a day or two and the boxes set in a dark place, until they become 
accustomed to the smaller hives, when they may be rowed out in the 
apiary on benches or blocks of wood, ready for the insertion of ripe 
queen cells. In this way eight or ten nuclei may be formed by 
breaking up a single colony or, if preferred, the nuclei may be drawn 
singly from a number of different colonies without any preceptible 
decrease in the strength. of the latter. The number of nuclei de-~ 
