CONTROLLED INCREASE. 
25 
moved, and a forced swarm, together with the queen, 
driven and placed upon the old stand, in a hive fur- 
nished with a sufficient number of sheets of foun- 
dation. These will quickly be drawn out, giving the 
queen an opportunity for rapid laying. If we intend 
that, three weeks later, the present brood in the parent 
hive — then coverted into bees — shall be added to the 
forced swarm, we stand the parent and swarm close 
together, turning the former so that its doorway is 
somewhat averted from the old position. In twenty- 
one days all the brood will be hatched, save, perhaps, 
a few drones (which are twenty-five days between 
egg-laying and hatching). A second driving secures 
the bees and the young queen, which must be removed, 
and the bees united. The combs may now either be 
fixed in frames, or extracted and run down for wax. 
It is true that foundation gives, economically, such 
perfect combs that transferred ones seem ungainly, 
and hardly worth the labour involved in preserving 
them ; whether their interim value warrants this is 
a question which each bee-keeper must determine for 
himself. 
“ Three out of two ” is the title of a method of 
moderate increase which has very much to recommend 
it, and, where two or more hives are possessed, is 
decidedly to be preferred to any plan which, by 
removing a swarm, halves the colony at one opera- 
tion. Early in the season, too, when we may fairly 
indulge the hope of securing fecundation for our new 
queens by special drones (see page 273), but when 
the hives, though prospering, are as yet none of 
them strong enough to retain an efficient working 
