RAISING AND INTRODUCTION OF QUEENS. 345 
A slight modification was afterwards made in the 
modus operandi^ which now stands thus : Remove 
the queen from the hive that is to receive the 
stranger, placing the latter, at dusk, in a warm situa- 
tion, quite alone, and without food, and so keeping 
her for thirty minutes. Then lift, at one corner, the 
quilt of the hive to which she is to be introduced, 
driving back the bees with very little smoke, and at 
once permit the queen to run down. Close the hive, 
make no examination for forty-eight hours, and leave 
the operation until so late that a lamp is necessary 
when the queen is introduced. 
It was evident that a plan so simple and expeditious, 
if only reliable, would confer a boon upon bee-keepers, 
the value of which could hardly be exaggerated. 
Honest trial has proved it, in my experience, to be all 
but uniformly successful, and that, too, under circum- 
stances in which the usual methods invariably fail, 
as two or three typical cases will make clear. 
Receiving a Cyprian queen from Mr. Benton, in one 
of his boxes, I introduced her, in the manner above 
described, to a Syrian stock ten days queenless, and 
which had many queen-cells near maturity. About 
forty- five hours afterwards, when the bees were getting 
quiet, her ladyship was found, looking none the worse 
for her ten days’ journey, saucy, and at home, and, 
for love of her, the bees had pulled down all their 
Syrian queen-cells. An albino was now given to 
a stock possessing a fertile worker, such being usually 
considered an insuperable impediment to the intro- 
duction of a queen ; but she was accepted without 
question, and, at the permitted time of examination. 
