NUCLEUS SWARMING. 101 



1. To the young queens. In Italianizing I had 

 given to every hive a young queen. A hive with a 

 young queen is much less likely to swarm than a 

 hive with a queen a year or two old. 



2. To the second stories. As soon as white clover 

 opened, the supers, filled with frames, had been put 

 on. This doubled the capacity of the hive, and set 

 the bees at work to store honey. They did not feel 

 any necessity for swarming. 



I had planned in the spring to make during the 

 season one and a half new swarms for each old one, 

 so as to have in the fall, including the old one, two 

 and a half swarms for each one with which I began. 



These new swarms were to be made on the nu- 

 cleus system. To make them the first essential was 

 fertile queens. Twelve days before the white clover 

 harvest would fail, as nearly as I could calculate, I 

 had again, as in the spring, set two hives to rearing 

 queens. The original swarm of Italians was again 

 deprived of its combs for this purpose, for I preferred 

 that all the queens should be grown from the eggs 

 of the imported mother, for she had proved to be an 

 excellent, full-blooded Italian. The queens reared 

 from her in the spring had before this filled all my 

 hives with beautiful, orange-banded, Italian workers. 



Her combs were taken, treated as spoken of in 

 the chapter on Italianizing, and given to the two 

 hives set apart for queen-rearing. The queen cells 



