76 THE BLESSED BEES. 



ened my honey harvest, and so have made the re- 

 ceipts of the year much smaller. 



On the eleventh day after making the nuclei I ex- 

 amined five of them, simply by lifting up the frames 

 to see if any eggs were in the cells. The presence of 

 eggs would show that the queens had begun to lay. 

 Four of them showed eggs, but the fifth none. The 

 next day I examined this fifth one again and found 

 eggs, as also in six more which I opened. Then 

 preparations were made for introducing queens to 

 the black stocks. That afternoon I looked over 

 twelve of the twenty-two stocks which remained 

 after the nuclei were made, found the queens and 

 removed them. Then opening a nucleus I found 

 its queen, caged her in a small wire-cloth cage about 

 the size of my thumb, and suspended this cage be- 

 tween two combs in one of the black stocks just 

 made queenless. So the work went on until a 

 caged queen was in each of the twelve black stocks. 

 The next morning I uncaged these queens, smeared 

 a little honey on them, and let them crawl down 

 among the bees. In every case they seemed to re- 

 ceive her gladly. Then the other ten stocks had 

 their old queens removed, and a caged one put in, 

 which was liberated the following morning in the 

 same way. On the fourth day afterwards I ex- 

 amined all and found fresh eggs in twenty, showing 

 that the queens had been received and were at 



