ITALIAN BEES. 
13 
twenty-five cents per pound, make eighty dollars credit to the 
parent stock. Others mention cases nearly as good. 
HOW TO PROPAGATE ITALIAN BEES, AND TO CONVERT 
COMMON BEES TO ITALIAN. 
Queens are the mothers of the colonies. To control the 
queens is to control the stock. If a queen is given to a col- 
ony when they already have one, they will kill the stranger ; 
but if a colony lias had its queen removed a few hours or 
days, they will be anxious to receive another; and if they 
have access to worker eggs will rear a number of young ones. 
If the bee-keeper will take his pure Italian queen from her 
hive, the colony will proceed to rear from five to ten young 
ones, which will commence hatching in ten or eleven days 
from the time the queen is removed. One or two of these 
should be left in the hive for their use. At the expiration 
of eight or nine days, the remainder may be cut out, leaving 
a little comb with the cell to prevent bruising it. As many 
native queens may now be removed from their hives as there 
arc of these cells, and one of the cells immediately put in 
each hive, having previously cut a hole in a brood comb to 
receive the cell. The queen will most likely emerge from 
the cell in two or three days, and a week after this fly abroad 
to mate with the drones, and in two or three days more will 
commence laying eggs, which will hatch in three weeks; and 
usually in two or three months from this time all the native 
stock will be dead, and the Italians in their place. These 
young queens will be apt to mate with the kind of drones 
most abundant when they fly out; and if these be native, of 
course the progeny will not bo pure, except that the drones 
from all such queens will be pure Italian; so that if, after this, 
pure queens are reared in such an apiary, or bee yard, they 
will be quite certain to mate with pure Italian drones. These 
hybrids may then be removed and pure ones iuserted in their 
stead. If, having removed a quecu and inserted a cell, the 
latter fails to hatch, the colony will rear a native queen from 
their own brood. 
To remove the queen, if in a movable conab hive, open 
the hive and she can be found on the combs. If in a com- 
mon box hive, invert the hive and set an empty one of nearly 
the same size on top of this; then by rapping on the lower 
