THE BEARING OF QUEEN BEES. 25 
be covered, and. if any eggs are present, it is easy to Bee them at a 
glance: but the chief gain is in the time spent in rinding the queen 
to remove her from the colony. To go over 8 or 10 or even 3 or 4 full 
frames requires ten times as much time as to open up a -mall nucleus 
and pick off the queen almost at the first glance. This much is in 
favor of small colonics, certainly. 
There are. on the other band, certain disadvantages in the use of 
very small nuclei in the hands of the inexperienced. Queens can be 
mated from small boxes with a comb area not greater than that of a 
1-pound section of honey, and with a mere handful of bee-: but 
experienced bee keepers have failed to make these work successfully, 
merely through ignorance of the special manipulation necessary for 
the smaller colonies. The complaint is also sometime- made that these 
nuclei are robbed out because the small number of bees will not defend 
the hive against invader- and that the colony will "swarm out" or 
leave the box because it is too small. It i- also claimed that the 
nucleus will not be a success unless there is unsealed brood in the comb 
to hold the bees. All of these general statements are too broad, for 
such colonies are not more easily robbed than large ones, do not -warm 
out if properly made, and brood is unnecessary under some circum- 
stances. However, there is a foundation for these complaint-, every 
one of which conies from experienced men. 
The entrance to a nucleus of the smallest -ize should be very -mall, 
so that one bee can protect the hive from -everal robbers. If. by any 
chance, a small colony without brood becomes queenless, it will almost 
invariably swarm out. and to this must be attributed most of the cases 
so reported. Unsealed brood undoubtedly help- to hold the bee- in the 
colony, and certainly should be used in most cases. After the first 
laying queen i- removed from a nucleus, this brood will be present; 
and from that time on there is no difficulty. To prevent the 
from swarming out with the first queen, brood may be given to them. 
If. however, the bee- are confined in the colony for some time it<> 
which there i>> no valid objection), they will rarely -warm out. even 
without brood, and to remove them to an out yard Lessens this difficulty 
-till further. 
Nuclei with not more than a few dozen bee- will mate a queen, and 
this has been done, and is being done repeatedly. There i- objec- 
tion, however, to the use of the -mall. -t nuclei in the hand- oi the 
inexperienced, for they will die out unless watched, and often require 
restocking. In a huge queen-rearing yard, this frequently amount- 
to considerable labor, and to avoid that feature a somewhat larger 
nucleus is desirable. Beekeeper- are not always adepts at handling 
-mall nuclei, and in actual practice a colony should be in such condi- 
tion that it can be handled quickly, safely, and sometimes even rather 
roughly. 
