214 AUSTRALASIAN 
one colony to care for, and this is near the number that is 
usually found in a hive from which a strong colony has just 
cast a swarm. As soon as the cells are forward enough to be 
plainly seen, destroy all except about ten or twelve of the 
largest and best-looking ones. 
Having now as far as possible fulfilled on our part every 
condition necessary to ensure the rearing of good queens, we 
must be content to leave the rest to the bees for a few days. 
The cells, when fully formed and capped, will have something 
of the appearance of Fig. 100, though the engraving 1s rather a 
flattering one. 
Fig. 100.—FRAME OF QUEEN CELLS. 
It will be remembered that the date and age of the eggs— 
three days—was marked on the frame, so that we can calculate 
the day when the queens will be at maturity ; that will be on 
the thirteenth after inserting the eggs. Being able to know 
within a few hours when the queens will emerge is one of the 
great advantages of this system of queen-rearing. By the old 
methods, and even when cells are built under the swarming 
impulse, it is impossible to say correctly how old the embryo 
queens may be. 
As soon as the cells are capped, a frame or two of emerging 
beood may be given to the colony to strengthen it. It will 
have been noticed by those who have had any experience in 
queen-breeding, that there is often a marked difference between 
queen cells ; some are long, pointed, and dense-looking, while 
others are stunted and thin-walled. The latter are always 
reckoned to contain poor queens, and it will be well to shun 
them, and make use of none but well-formed, rough-lookin 
long, pointed ones. On the morning of the twelfth day after 
the eggs were given the nuclei can be formed. 
