88 
BEE-CULTURE. 
ninth day, to provide a similar queenless nucleus or miniature 
colony for tlie reception of each of the young queens, and to 
cut out all except one of them, distributing them separately 
to each nucleus by cutting an aperture in one of its combs 
and fitting the queen cell into it. Great care is required in 
performing this operation in order to prevent the young queen 
from being injured or destroyed. Some of them will at that 
time be found to have j ust changed into its pupae or chrysal- 
is stage of development, when they are so tender that a slight 
pressure, jar, or too long exposure to the cool air, may destroy 
their vitality. Where these queen cells are distributed to 
colonies which have but recently been deprived of their 
queens, and still have eggs or grub young enough to be con- 
vertible into queens, they not unfrcquently destroy the trans- 
ferred one, even to the third and fourth trial : and in some 
instances I have had them to continue it when they had no 
longer any material for young queens left. In such cases 
they will sometimes receive a hatched or'mature queen; but 
in others they pertinaciously refuse to receive any, but in that 
case will occasionally rear one or more from eggs which may 
be furnished them immediately after those which they bad 
have from age ceased to be convertible into queens. In a few 
instances, however, they will, for a time, refuse to receive or 
rear all and any queens. When this is the case, it is best to 
break it up and unite it to another. These obstinate and 
contrary nuclei are apt to become infested with ‘'•fertile work- 
ers,” which, while they resemble the ordinary worker bee, are 
capable of laying eggs which produce drones only. In rearing 
queens the workers not unfrequently, after feeding a number 
of the worker larva: for two or three days upon the royal 
jelly (upon which embryo queens are fed, as if intending to 
convert them into queensj, suddenly cease to supply a por- 
tion of them with it, and thenceforward supply them with 
such food only as is used in the development of the ordinary 
worker bee, completing their development as such. 
From the period of hatching to that of impregnation, which 
in favorable weather is generally from seven to fourteen days, 
many young queens are lost, or perish from various causes, 
a few of which it may be well to enumerate. They may be 
caugbt by the bee martin; become exhausted; fall to theground; 
become chilled; or, from exhaustion, be unable again to rise, 
their wings being short; sometimeswhen she fliesout theworkers 
