42 SUCCESSFUL BEE-KEEPING. 
facts correctly. Circumstances exert a controlling influence and 
materially affect the result. Thus queens reared in small nuclei, 
such as our correspondent uses, will certainly issue earlier and usu- 
ally become fertile sooner, than such as are reared in larger colo- 
nies: and the seasonable removal of all surplus royal cells, will 
efficiently contribute to bring about the desired consummation. 
On the other hand, the young queen of a populous colony, whose 
hive was full of comb, well supplied with brood and honey, has been 
known not to be impregnated, though drones abounded, till more 
than three weeks after she left her cell. The truth seems to be, 
that there is no definite term—circumstances governing in every 
case. 
After we have thus adjusted the new colonies, we let 
them remain for from six to ten days, when, if drones are 
abundant, and we have safely transferred the cells, we 
shall probably find our queens have become fertile, and 
have commenced the work of depositing eggs. We now 
catch the queen—she will not sting—between the thumb 
and finger, and with a pair of scissors, clip one wing, so 
that she cannot fly. This is to guard against losing a 
swarm at a future time, should we neglect to swarm the 
bees, or give them work to do. We also now cage the 
queen for about three days, by placing her in a case of 
gauze wire cloth a little larger than a thimble, and sus- 
pended in the hive, or laid upon the top of the frames 
through one of the holes in the honey board, while we 
are swarming the bees. After thus securing the queen, 
and filling up the hives with empty comb frames, we turn 
the whole one-fourth the way round, thus causing the 
parent and infant colonies to exchange places, throwing 
out of the parent stocks swarms of worker bees, into the 
infant colonies. The hive should not be turned between 
the hatching of the young queens, and their fertilization, 
because bees belonging to swarms of fertile and wnfertile queens 
will not fraternize, but will quarrel. It might be turned 
