RAISING AND INTRODLXTION OF QUEENS. 347 
introduce, but to get one queen to lay^ in half-a-dozen 
distinct hives in a single week ; for the bees not only 
receive the queen, but, when they have lost their 
proper mother but a little time, appear utterly un- 
affected by, or unaware of, the change. 
My trials have, I believe, embraced almost every 
supposable difficulty and variation both in season 
and in the condition of the stocks, and show the 
system to be practically perfect, as I have to record with 
laying queens a single failure only, and in that I have 
no evidence at all of the way in which the ill-fated one 
vanished. To the colony in which the mishap occurred 
I subsequently gave a black queen, to try the temper 
of the enemy. She, being satisfactorily installed as 
mother, was deposed one afternoon, to make way, in 
the evening, for a Cyprian. The bees came out 
rather strongly when the corner of the quilt was 
I lifted, which necessitated more than the customary 
slight puff of smoke. Half-an-hour later, hearing, as 
I fancied, more than the usual noise of fanners at 
the door, fear of losing another first-grade Cyprian 
determined me to examine the stock by lamplight, 
and so, if needful, rescue my pet queen from the 
mauling I feared she might be experiencing. The 
bull’s-eye lantern being placed near by, the combs 
were removed one by one, when certainly less than 
a dozen bees took wing, and, in the centre of the 
brood-nest, the Cyprian turned up, walking about in 
a normal way, as though she had been there a month. 
The question may fairly be asked : How is it 
that an alien is thus received, so that she begins 
laying forthwith (if eggs have matured in her ovaries). 
