10 
BEE-CULTUIIE. 
the old stock from exhaustion, and prevent annoyance from 
weak and after-swarms. An artificial swarm may be made 
by driving two-thirds of the bees with the queen, into the 
new hive, setting it on the old stand, and moving the old 
hive away a rod or more. The latter will proceed to rear a 
queen in the same manner as a colony from which a swarm 
had issued naturally. If a colony is queenless and have no 
eggs from which to rear a queen, it can be supplied with 
comb containing eggs from another hive. 
FERTILIZATION OF THE QUEEN. 
The impregnation of the queen never takes place in the 
hive, but always in the open air, on the wing; sometimes as 
far as two or three miles from home. The queen generally 
flies abroad for this purpose in the middle of the day, when 
she is about a week od. At this time of day, in fair weather, 
the drones flying are numerous, so that there is but little 
doubt of her meeting them on her first flight, although she 
sometimes has to fly out several times. She will commence 
laying in two or three days after impregnation, and, strange 
to say, will continue fertile during life — four or five years — 
without further intercourse with the drones. 
In practice, if a queen is hatched so defective in wings that 
she cannot fly, I kill her at once, knowing that she will nev- 
er be of any service in the hive. But if once fertilized, her 
wings may be cropped, or she confined in a hive where no 
drone can have access to her. She will continue to lay, 
without interruption, during life. I will here state a fact 
which seems a strange anomaly : If anything happens by 
which a queen’s impregnation is prevented, she will eventu- 
ally commence laying, but all such eggs produce drones, 
whether laid in worker or drone cells. Also, in some 
cases where a colony is for a long time queenlcss, some of 
the workers will lay a few eggs, hut such eggs , like the eggs 
of an unfertilized queen, will produce nothing but drones. 
HOW TO RAISE QUEENS ARTIFICIALLY. 
After the queen is fertilized she never leaves the hive ex- 
cept with the swarm, but continues moving gracefully over 
the comb, depositing eggs in the bottoms of the empty cells 
