188 
THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
transferred to (7, when the bees are in full flight. Other 
methods still will suggest themselves to the expert. 
To those who have learned to open the hives and 
remove the combs, and who use but one Apiary, this way 
of making artificial swarms — which I call the piling mode 
— will probably prove to be the best. It does not confuse 
the bees, by presenting to them a new entrance, or a hive 
having a strange smell , and retains in the mother-stock 
adult bees enough to gather water, and attend to all neces- 
sary out-door work. In the Apiarian Convention of 1857, 
which was largely attended, and where the question of 
artificial swarming with one Apiary, was fully discussed, 
Dzierzon recommended a method as much like this as the 
plan of his hives would permit. 
I shall now show how, by means of movable-comb 
hives, fertile young queens may always be kept on hand, 
to supply the forced mother-stocks : About three weeks 
before A (p. 180) is to be forced, take from it, as lato in 
the afternoon as there is light enough to do it, a comb 
containing worker-eggs, and bees just gnawing out of 
their cells, and put it, with the mature bees that are on it, 
into an empty hive. If there are not bees enough ad- 
hering to it to prevent the brood from being chilled 
during the night, more must be shaken into the hive 
from another comb. If the transfer is made so late in the 
day that the bees are not disposed to leave the hive, 
enough will have hatched, by morning, to supply the 
place of those which may return to the parent-stock. A 
comb from which about one-quarter of the brood has 
hatched, will almost always have eggs in the empty cells, 
and if all things are favorable, the bees, in a few hours, 
will usually begin to raise a queen.* 
* I have known about a tea-cup full of bees, confined in a dark place, to begin, 
within an hour, enlarging cells for raisL ig a queen. 
