268 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
making the hands act as stops, by striking on the 
edge of the hive side, so that the frame does not 
reach the bottom board by a handbreadth. The bees 
fall to the floor, are not crushed, and are all, young 
and old, within. The few stragglers, and those on 
the wing, flying to the comb, may be brushed off 
as we are conveying it to its new resting-place. The 
stock on Stand III. is now carried to a fresh site — say. 
Stand I. — while the hive containing the bee-less combs 
and brood takes its place. The flying bees of the re- 
moved stock provide, as in cases before noted, the 
working population, which will, if need be, raise a 
new mother. It has been* advised to here cage a 
spare fertile queen, which may be liberated in 
thirty-six hours. This plan may, and would, succeed 
in conditions where scarcely any plan could fail, 
viz., in continued favourable weather, and during a 
honey flow ; but in our uncertain climate neither 
of these can be calculated upon. If the sky 
become overcast, and the flight from the removed 
stock, consequently, sluggish, new contingents of 
bees will join from the removed stock during, 
possibly, a week, rendering the introduction of the 
queen most risky. I would immensely prefer adding 
the queen from the removed stock, which, having lost 
its old bees, gives the most favoured conditions for 
queen-introduction by caging, a system which I no 
longer follow, using instead of it the Simmins method. 
I should simply introduce direct my new queen at 
night, with the most perfect confidence that she would 
be duly accepted (see “Queen Introduction”). 
* “ British Bee-keepers’ Guide Book,” page 85. 
