ITALIANIZING. 71 



shut with a determination that I would not open 

 them until the 12th day, when it would be necessary 

 to remove from each queen-rearing hive all the queen- 

 cells but one, and to give one queen-cell to each of 

 the nucleus hives prepared for their reception. To 

 stimulate these queen-rearing hives to the greatest 

 activity I fed each of them about a half pound of 

 pure sugar syrup every night for five nights. I 

 have since learned that at that season they would 

 have done just as well without this. After these 

 two hives had been arranged for queen-rearing, 

 twelve frames of the brood which had been taken 

 from them were given to the Italians, in which they 

 gladly went to work. The other frames, taken from 

 the queen-rearing hives, were distributed among my 

 weakest stocks. It had been a hard day's work, not 

 finished until 7 o'clock. Then I went early to bed, 

 and dreamed of virgin Italian queens flying in terror 

 from pursuing hordes of headless drones. 



The next day I began to arrange the nucleus 

 hives. A nucleus hive is a hive for a small swarm 

 of bees, usually two or three frames. Where any 

 number of young queens are reared they are usually 

 hatched in nuclei, but the queen cells are not grown 

 in them. To insure the best queens, the cells must 

 be grown in strong swarms ; but after they are 

 capped they may be hatched in nuclei. Often 

 small hives are made especially for nucleus swarms. 



