68 
BEE-CULTUIIE, 
width by about six inches in length, and this strip inserted 
into a frame of comb, the strip resting horizontally upon bear- 
ings of half an inch at its ends, with an open space cut out 
between these hearings, and under tho strip containing the 
eggs, an inch in breadth. The bees will generally so distrib- 
ute the queen’s cells along the length, and at the lower edge 
of the strip of comb containing the eggs, as to admit of their 
being separated without much loss. The comb containing 
the eggs should hang between two others containing a suffi- 
ciency of honey and pollen to amply supply their wants. 
These combs, however, should contain no eggs or grub young 
enough to be convertible into queens ; otherwise the bees may 
select these native or impure eggs or grubs for queens, and 
and rear the pure Italian eggs as workers only. This is the 
more important from the fact that they sometimes transfer 
eggs and grub from one cell to another, or from a worker to a 
queen cell. They may therefore take an impure egg or 
grub, and by placing it in a cell constructed upon the comb 
containing the pure Italian eggs, lead the breeder to suppose 
it pure; and should it be nearly so, and produce a progeny 
not easily distinguishable from the pure race, it may be the 
means of introducing impurity into the apiary, which, failing 
soon to discover, may be so extensively disseminated through 
it as to require much time, care, labor, and loss to eradicate it. 
Tho bees will generally construct upon such a strip of 
comb from one to ten or twelve queen cells, frequently by 
enlarging worker cells, and extending them, thus enlarged, 
vertically downward in the space made vacant under the 
strip The queen cells vary in length from three-eighths of 
an inch to one and three-eighths inch, and resemble small 
teats, much in the shape and form of a small peanut shell. 
Each shell contains a single queen, and as soon as the first of 
them is hatched she proceeds to destroy all the others by 
tearing open, or incitiug the workers to tear open, their cells, 
when she will sting them to death and the workers drag them 
out of the hive. As the first maturing queen may be hatched 
on the ninth or tenth day after the eggs and grub have been 
given to the nucleus to rear them from, it becomes neces- 
sary, in order to save all but the first batched from destruc- 
tion, on the ninth day, to provide a similar queenless nucleus 
or miniature colony for the reception of each of the young 
queens, and to cut out all except one of them, distributing 
