72 THE BLESSED BEES. 



This is usually the case where long and shallow- 

 frames are used. But with my small square 

 Gallup frame, I could use the regular hives and 

 frames for the nuclei. When the regular hives are 

 used for nuclei, it is much easier to build up these 

 nuclei into regular swarms. After your young 

 queens are hatched and fertilized, if you want to in- 

 crease the number of your swarms, you have only 

 to take frames of the hatching brood from your 

 strong stocks and give them to these nuclei. The 

 brood will hatch and be at home in the nucleus, and 

 so each nucleus is rapidly built up into a strong 

 stock. My object now was not to increase the 

 number of my swarms, but to obtain fertile Italian 

 queens, to give to my black stocks. Making allow- 

 ance for the loss of a few queens when they went 

 on their marriage flight, or from my inexperience 

 in introducing them to the blacks, I concluded to 

 make arrangements to hatch forty cells. Forty of 

 the empty hives were suitably provided with di- 

 vision boards, which could be moved back and forth 

 in the hives, and so contract one end to as small 

 proportions as desired, and were then properly lo- 

 cated in the orchard. Then, while waiting for the 

 queen-cells to be capped, there was time for other 

 work among the hives that were gathering honey, 

 of which more will be said in the next chapter. I 

 want first to tell the whole story of the queens. 



