258 ENEMIES OF BEES. 



enough to open them, whether a feeble colony has a fertile 

 queen, and precautions can be taken at once to give it the 

 strength which is indispensable, not merely to its safety, but 

 to its ability for any kind of successful labor. 



As a certain number of bees are needed in a hive, as well 

 to warm and hatch the thousands of eggs which a healthy 

 queen can lay, as to feed and properly develop the larvse 

 after they are hatched, it is evident that a feeble colony 

 must remain so for a long time, unless it can at once be 

 supplied with a considerable accession of numbers. Even 

 if there were no moths in existence, to trouble such a hive, it 

 would not be able to rear a large number of bees, until after 

 the best of the honey-harvest had passed away : and then it 

 would become powerful, only that its increasing numbers 

 might devour the food, which the others had previously 

 stored in the cells. 



If a small colony has a considerable number of bees, and 

 is able to cover and warm, at least one comb, in addition to 

 those containing brood which they already have, I take from 

 one of my strong stocks, a frame, having three or four thou- 

 sand or more young bees, which are almost ready to emerge 

 from their cells. These bees which require no food, and 

 need nothing but warmth to develop them, will, in a few 

 days, hatch in the new hive to which they are given, and 

 thus the requisite number of workers, in the full vigor and 

 energy of youth, will be furnished to the hive, and the dis- 

 couraged queen, finding at once a suitable number of nurses* 

 to take charge of her eggs, deposits them in the proper cells, 

 instead of simply extruding them, to be devoured by the bees. 

 While bees often attack full grown strangers which are in- 

 troduced into their hive, they never fail to receive gladly all 



* A bee, a few days after it is hatched, is as fully competent for its 

 duties, as it ever will be, at any subsequent period of its life. 



