ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 43 
with safety a day or two before the hatching of the 
queens, but it is more difficult to find the queen among 
the greater number of bees ; hence, soon after her fertil- 
ization is the best time. It may sometimes happen, when 
this operation is performed at a time when the honey har- 
vest has received a check from a storm or otherwise, that 
the bees, thus empty of honey, and consequently more 
quarrelsome, suddenly thrown into the presence of a 
strange queen, are inclined to sting her. Itis to prevent 
this, that she is caged for the space of three days, after 
which she may safely be liberated. The bees cannot 
harm her through gauze wire cloth not coarser than four- 
teen meshes to the inch. The swarm will suffer no par- 
ticular detriment by her confinement, since comb building | 
will go on as if she were at liberty. But this is only a 
precaution to beginners, the experienced apiarian will 
always know when to cage the queen ; since in the midst 
of the swarming scason, when the honey blossoms are 
yielding in profusion, little or no precaution is needed to 
protect either the queen or the operator, 
Where great rapidity of multiplication of swarms is the 
object, one stock only is left in the quadruple hive in spring, 
leaving out, in this case, the movable fronts of all the un- 
occupied apartments, and opening all the passage ways 
through the inner walls. We now transfer a card of 
comb, bees, and brood from A to B, proceeding as before 
described. The tenth day thereafter, from some other hive, 
take two more cards of comb and bees, for C and D, 
giving to each of these a queen cell, taken from B, and 
always capped over. We should use no other, as the bees 
will be likely to destroy them. When our young queens 
have matured, we turn the hive half the way round, let- 
ting it thus remain from eighteen to twenty days, or un- 
