ITALIAN BEES. 117 



black bees are in common hives transfer them, putting the drone 

 comb in the outside frames. Should you desire to Italianize 

 stocks for neighbors, they may bs brought to your yard and 

 Italianized with your own. As soon as the Italian drones begin 

 to hatch, form one or more strong nuclei from your best Italian 

 stock to obtain a large number of queen-cells, as directed on 

 pages 65, 66 and 67. 



On the eighth day after forming the nuclei, examine to ascer- 

 tain the number of queen-cells, and remove the black queens 

 from about two-thirds as many stocks. Leave them thus over 

 night to realize their loss, and then carefully insert a queen-cell 

 among the brood in each stock. Mark the frames containing 

 them and examine the next day, for if any are destroyed others 

 must be inserted in their places. What queen-cells remain may 

 be used for other stocks, except to leave one in each nuclei to 

 hatch and become fertile to supply neighbors or to be used in 

 Bwarming. This method is short, but requires close attention to 

 prevent some stocks from rearing black queens or becoming 

 queenless. The stocks will also be somewhat weakened by 

 being deprived of a laying queen even for a short time at this 

 season of the year. The process will seldom be so well managed 

 but that a few black drones will be reared, hence if queens are 

 not reared early the first season, some of them will be likely to 

 mate with black drones, which will be known by some of their 

 worker progeny having but two yellow bands and others none 

 at all while a part will have the three bands of the pure Italian. 

 A few poorly marked in any stock should not condemn it, if 

 there are any hybrid stocks in the yard, as bees from different 



