62 
BEE-CULTURE. 
to do if left to their own way. They thus keep them until 
they need them for whatever swarms they see proper to give 
off. I have had eight or ten queens hatched in my hand in 
fifteen minutes, by taking the cells out of a hive so the bees 
could not confine them to the cells. So many young queens 
just hatching when the atter-swarms are coming off, is the 
reason that a number of queens come out withjthe after-swarms, 
and sometimes cause them to light in different places. But 
if hived they will all be killed against the next morning. If 
one queen is allowed to hatch in advance of others, she will 
proceed immediately to destroy them, by eating a hole in the 
side of the cells and stinging the young queens. A cell that 
has been torn open by the violence of a queen may be known 
by its h iving a hole in the side. Where a queen has hatched 
naturally, the opening is in the end. In rearing Italian queens 
I have always to be sure not to let the young queens remain 
in the hive or nucleus a single day beyond their time of 
hatching, as all but one are sure to be destroyed. If any of 
those bee-keepers who keep several queens running at large 
in the hive, for any length of time, will inform me how I 
can do so, I will compensate him well for the information, 
as it will be of great service to me. The presence of so many 
queens often occasions a great deal of annoyance, by induc- 
ing the giving off more swarms than are capable of taking 
care of themselves; and the mother colony is so reduced that 
it has not bees enough to make any surplus honey nor to cover 
its combs to guard against worms and robbers. For if they 
keepon swarming until the sixteenth day, nearly all the hatched 
bees will go out. and there will only be the brood of four or 
five days’ laying of the old queen to hatch, and it will be a 
full month before the brood ot the young queen can be hatch- 
ing. It is not strange that such colonies should be taken by 
the worms in August, when they arc most abundant; and the 
bee-keeper will very naturally say : “There, the worms havo 
destroyed my best colony!” Or, perhaps, it is robbed by 
other bees, and the blame is charged to the robbers. Or, per- 
haps, the young queens of these after-swarms, or of the moth- 
er colony, in their flight to meet the drones, may be lost. As 
they now have no brood in the hive from which to rear an- 
other, the colony will soon dwindle away, and become a prey 
to worms and robbers. These evils may be very much rem- 
edied by destroying all the queen-cells in the old hive, except 
