220 AUSTRALASIAN 
being mated with drones of our own apiary, there should be 
no other bees located nearer than one or two miles off. 
QUEEN NURSERIES. 
When queen rearing is carried on extensively, that is, aS a 
special business, appliances termed queen nurseries are often 
brought into requisition to aid the queen breeder. By the use 
of these, as will be presently seen, much time is saved, and a 
proportionately greater number of queens can be reared by 
each colony so employed, as the queen cells may be taken 
away from them after they have advanced a certain stage and 
be brought to maturity in the nurseries, when the bees may 
again be furnished with material for cell building, or have 
fertile queens given to them. There are two descriptions of 
nurseries in use. One is a kind of double cased hive without 
a top—usually made of tin. The space between the inner and 
outer cases, which extends all round the sides and bottom, is 
about an inch wide. This space is filled with water, and a 
small lamp is kept burning underneath ; regulated so as to 
maintain a temperature within the nursery of about 90°—the 
ordinary temperature of a hive when the colony is rearing 
queens. They are usually made large enough to hold about 
six frames conveniently, which can be suspended within them 
in the same manner as in a hive. When queen cells are to be 
matured in this nursery, they are removed from the colony in 
which they were built, soon after being capped, and placed in 
it, and the nursery covered. Several lots of cells can be 
maturing in it at the same time, but great care must be taken 
to keep the nursery at an even temperature or the embryo 
queens will be destroyed. 
The other kind of nursery—so called—is a set of small 
cages fitted into a frame ; the cells are placed in the cages and 
the frame is suspended in a hive containing a strong colony, 
which supplies the necessary heat for maturing them. Two 
or even three frames of cages would not be too many for a 
very strong colony. 
The nursery shown in Fig 103 is the invention of Mr. 
Alley, and as I have had some experience with it I can answer 
for its usefulness. One great advantage in making use of a 
colony instead of the lamp nursery for maturing cells is that 
