ITALIANIZING. 73 



It seemed to me that it would be best to let the 

 queens come as near maturity as posssible, before 

 taking them from the parent hive. I might safely 

 wait until the twelfth day from the date of giving 

 the queenless blacks the Italian frames. On the 

 eleventh day, twelve of the weakest of the black 

 stocks were selected. Each hive was carefully 

 looked over and the queen removed. Then these 

 twelve swarms were broken up into forty nuclei. 

 There were frames enough to give each nucleus 

 three. The nuclei were made towards night, and 

 the hives were shut until ten o'clock next day. 

 Then as I opened the entrances, I leaned a board 

 against the hives before the entrances. The bees 

 coming out and meeting this unusual obsruction 

 were led to mark their new location, and so would 

 return to it, instead of going back to their old hive. 

 At one o'clock everything seeming right about the 

 nuclei, and all things looking propitious, I opened 

 one of the queen-rearing hives. It was for me an 

 interesting moment. Another move of the hand 

 would bring to light one of the frames upon which 

 I expected to find queen-cells. The frames were 

 carefully moved apart so as to remove all danger of 

 bruising cells as the frame was lifted, then it was 

 taken out. I was not disappointed. On that comb 

 there were seven large fine-looking cells. The other 

 three frames had respectively five, eight and nine 



