ITALIA^ BEES. 123 



stock from which you may wish to breed. The queen-cells must 

 be removed by the tenth day from the time the brood wa3 

 inserted, lest a queen should hatch and destroy all the other cells 

 in the hive. If the comb containing eggs and larva? for queen, 

 cells be new, more cells will be built. Before inserting it in the 

 queenless stock it should be cut in strips an inch wide by three 

 inches long. To insert one of these strips, make an opening in 

 the comb three inches long by one inch deep, and directly under 

 this cut out a piece two-and-a-half inches long by one inch deep, 

 which will give room for lengthening down the cells, and also 

 leave a shoulder to support each end of the strip. As fast as 

 the cells are used other strips may be inserted in the same open 

 ings. A queen is seldom injured while caged if the wire-cloth 

 be neither coarser nor finer than fifteen or twenty meshes to the 

 inch. The cage is sometimes made by winding a piece of wire- 

 cloth around the thumb and stopping the ends with corks, but 

 we prefer them made about three-eighths of an inch deep, nail- 

 ing the edges of the wire-cloth to a wooden bottom. When 

 introducing a queen, the cage is sometimes suspended in the hive 

 by a wire between two combs, but the safety of the queen is bet- 

 ter secured by inserting the cage in a comb near the brood, with 

 room above for the bees to hover upon it. 



By making and keeping stocks queenless, and feeding them 

 when necessary, drones are retained for fertilizing queens late in 

 the fall. By inducing the bees in such stocks to cluster outside, 

 either by contracting the space inside, or leaning a piece of comb 

 filled with capped brood against the entrance, drones will collect 

 to such hives by thousands. 



