65 THE BLESSED BEES, 



then having the feed of syrup at night the whole 

 hive had been excited to such activity that the good 

 queen had been roused to do her best in laying eggs. 



9. I had now made provision for an abundant 

 supply of drones. Two frames of pure worker comb 

 were now put in the centre of the Italian hive, and 

 the hive then left undisturbed for three days. 



Worker eggs and worker larvae in as many frames 

 as possible, were what I wanted now from the Ital- 

 ians, for from their eggs and larvae I would grow my 

 new queens. These new queens were not to be 

 grown in the Italian hive, for I could not force the 

 Italians to build queen-cells unless I took away their 

 queen. If I took away their queen I must introduce 

 her to one of my black stocks. As a beginner is 

 not always skillful in introducing, he may so do it 

 that the bees will not receive the queen, but will 

 kill her and cast her from the hive. I was not 

 willing to run this risk with my costly imported 

 queen. And it was not at all necessary to run the 

 risk, for the new queens could just as well be grown 

 in hives of black bees, provided I killed their queen 

 and took from them all their own frames of comb, 

 and gave them frames of eggs and larvae from the 

 Italian hive. They would then have no eggs or 

 larvae except what had come from the imported 

 mother, hence the queens they would grow would 

 all be pure Italians. A common dung-hill fowl 



