Fic. 21—In THE Mipst oF THE Honey FLow. 
strains which are very productive and are extremely gentle, he would 
like to know how to get these desirable strains introduced. 
From a reliable. queen breeder secure a three-banded or five- 
banded Italian queen. At the close of this bulletin will be found a 
list of queen breeders and firms who can furnish you bee supplies of 
all kinds. For this queen it will be necessary to pay from 50 cents to 
$2.50, according to the time of the year and the merits of the queen. 
The queen will be shipped to you in a wire-and-wooden cage accom- 
panied by three or four worker bees. The next step is to introduce 
the new queen into your old colony. There are different ways of doing 
this. Experience teaches, however, that success usually results from 
placing the wire cage, the entrance of which is stopped with candy, 
in the middle of the hive on top of the frames. After the hive is 
opened it is well to take out the middle frame and find the old queen 
and remove her previous to introducing the new queen. The bees 
will soon find the wire cage and begin to cut away the candy from the 
entrance. The worker bees on the inside of the cage will also begin 
eating, and by the time the entrance is cleared the bees will have 
become well acquainted and the fertilized queen begins almost imme- 
diately to lay pure Italian eggs. In about 28 days the Italian workers 
begin to come out of the hive and in a month or six weeks, during the 
honey flow, most of the native bees will have died, thus leaving you a 
pure strain of bees. Through the summer months open each hive 
every few days and examine the brood cells. It is not necessary to 
disturb the bees very much in doing this. Honey may also be taken 
from ‘time to time from the hives with little if any disturbance to the 
bees. 
