216 ARTIFICAL SWARMING. 



Otherwise I keep them shut up until about an hour before 

 sunset of the third day. The hives containing these small 

 colonies, ought, if not well protected by being made double, 

 to be set where they are thoroughly sheltered from the 

 intense heat of the sun ; and the entrances should be so ad- 

 justed as 10 give them sufficient ventilation. 



These small colonies I call nuclei, (from the Latin word 

 nucleus, a small cluster,) and the system of forming stocks 

 from them, my nucleus system ; and before I describe this 

 system more particularly, I shall show other ways in which 

 the nuclei can be formed. If the Apiarian chooses, he can 

 take a frame containing bees just ready to mature, and eggs 

 and young worms, all of the worker kind, together with the 

 old bees which cluster on it, and shut them up in the manner 

 previously described, even if he has no sealed queen to give 

 them. He will find that a comb from which about one third 

 of the brood has just hatched, will almost always contain 

 eggs freshly deposited in the empty cells. If all things are 

 favorable, the bees will set about raising a queen in a few 

 hours. I once took not more than a tea-cup full of bees, and 

 on confining them in a dark place with a small piece of brood 

 comb, found that in about an hour, they had begun to enlarge 

 some of the cells, to raise a new queen ! If the Apiarian 

 has sealed queens on hand, they ought to be given to the 

 nuclei, in order to save all the time possible. 



I sometimes make these nuclei as follows : A suitable 

 comb with bees, &c., is taken from a stock-hive, and put in 

 an empty one made to stand partly in the place of the old 

 hive, which, of course, must previously be moved a little on 

 one side. In this way, I am able to divert a considerable 

 number of the bees from the old stock, to my nucleus, and 

 the necessity of shutting it up, is done away with. If the 

 bees from the old slock do not enter the small one, in suf- 



