ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 239 



swarms, or returning them to the old stocks, to catch the 

 supernumerary queens, and confine them in any of his small 

 honey boxes, 'with about a pint of workers to each. These 

 small colonies may be put in any shady place, apart from 

 the other stocks ; their queens will soon become fertile, and 

 may be easily caught, if needed for any purpose. 



I often make one queen supply several hives with eggs, so as 

 to keep them all strong in numbers, and yet constantly engag- 

 ed in rearing a large number of spare queens. Two hives 

 which I shall call A and B, are deprived at intervals of a week, 

 each of its queen,* in order to induce them to raise a num- 

 ber of young sealed queens, for the use of the Apiary. As 

 soon as the queens in A, are of an age suitable to be removed, 

 I take them away, and give the colony a fertile queen from 

 another hive, C ; when she has laid a large number of eggs 

 in the empty cells, I remove the sealed queens from B, and 

 give it the loan of this fertile mother, until she has performed 

 the same useful office for them. By this time, the queen 

 cells in C, are sealed over ; these are now removed, and the 

 queen restored ; she has thus made one circuit, and laid a 

 very large number of eggs, in*ihe two hives which were first 

 deprived of their queens. Afler allowing her to replenish 

 her own hive with eggs, I send her out again, on her per- 

 ambulating mission, and by this new device am able to get 

 an extraordinary number of young queens from the three 

 hives, and at the same lime preserve their numbers froni 

 seriously diminishing. Two queens may in this way, be 

 made in six hives, to furnish all the supernumerary queens 

 which will be wanted in quite a large Apiary. 



It must be obvious to every intelligent Apiarian, that the 



* The queens taken from such hives, may be advantageously used 

 in forming artificial colonies. 



