BEE MANUAL. 225 
INTRODUCING VIRGIN QUEENS, 
This is a matter in which I cannot claim to have had special 
success. To introduce successfully a mated queen is an easy 
matter compared to introducing an unmated one. Sometimes 
I have had fair success with a considerable number ; at other 
times, and under similar conditions as far as I could judge, I 
have lost fully 50 per cent. However, several experienced 
apiarists have lately given the matter much thought, and 
experimented in different ways, and some now claim to be able 
to introduce unmated queens without difficulty. 
The principal feature in Alley’s method appears to be making 
the colony queenless three days before attempting the intro- 
duction. He says :— 
“*In order to introduce such queens (virgins) successfully the colony 
should remain queenless three days (seventy-two hours); then give 
the bees a pretty good fumigating with tobacco smoke. Remember 
the bees must remain queenless three days at the least, and during 
the meantime no queen must be near them, otherwise the operation 
will prove a failure. Virgin queens can also be introduced successfully 
by daubing them with honey and using no tobacco smoke. . . . This 
isa much slower process than by fumigating them with tobacco smoke, 
but just as successful.” 
In another place he gives the ordinary plan of introducing 
queens, only laying stress upon the point of keeping the bees 
queenless for three days. 
Mr. Doolittle, who claims to have introduced several 
hundred without having lost one, says: ‘“‘To secure the best 
results the queens should be about three days old when placed 
in the introducing cages, but a difference of two days either 
way will make no great difference.” After removing the 
queen which he wishes to supersede, he places a caged virgin 
queen, well supplied with food, on the top of the frames, and 
leaves her there for five days, when he opens the cage and closes 
the hive, leaving the queen to come out of the cage at her 
leisure. Twenty-four hours afterwards he examines the combs 
and removes any queen cells that have not been already 
destroyed by the bees. Both Alley’s and Doolittle’s plans 
appear to be specially meant for introducing to nucleus colonies. 
Mr. D. A. Jones, of Ontario, stated at the Toronto Con- 
vention that he had introduced fifty queens into fifty hives in 
Q 
