78 
ITALIAN BEES. 
black bees are in common hives transfer them, putting the drone 
comb in the outside frames. Should you desire to Italianize 
stocks for neighbors, they may be brought to your yard and 
Italianized with your own. As soon as the Italian drones begin 
to hatch, form one or more strong nuclei from your best Italian 
stock to obtain a large number of queen-cells, as directed on 
pages 65, 66 and 67. 
On the eighth day after forming the nuclei, examine to ascer- 
tain the number of queen-cells, and remove the black queens 
from about two-thirds as many stocks. Leave them thus over 
night to realize their loss, and then carefully insert a queen-cell 
among the brood in each stock. Mark the frames containing 
them and examine the next day, for if any are destroyed others 
must be inserted in their places. What queen-cells remain maj 
be used for other stocks, except to leave one in each nuclei to 
hatch and become fertile to supply neighbors or to be used in 
swarming. This method is short, but requires close attention to 
prevent some stocks from rearing black queens or becoming 
queenless. The stocks will also be somewhat weakened by 
being deprived of a laying queen even for a short time at this 
season of the year. The process will seldom be so well managed 
but that a few black drones will be reared, hence if queens are 
not reared early the first season, some of them will be likely to 
mate with black drones, which will be known by some of their 
worker progeny having but two yellow bands and others none 
at all, while a part will have the three bands of the pure Italian. 
A few poorly marked in any stock should not condemn it, if 
there are any hybrid stocks in the yard, as bees from different 
