182 
THE HIVE AND IIONET-BEE. 
best. It not only secures a reasonable increase of colonies, 
but maint.'iins them all in high vigor; and in ordinary 
se.asons will yield, in good locations, more surplus honey, 
than if all increase of colonies was discouraged. If every 
bee-keeper would ado])t this plan, our country might 
soon be like the ancient Palestine, “ a land flowing with 
milk and honey.” 
In all the modes of artificial increase thus far given, the 
parent or mother-stock —as I shall call it in this connection 
—after parting with the forced sw.arm, was either supplied 
with a sealed royal cell, or left to raise a new queen from 
worker-brood. JBij the use of movahle-comb hives, it may 
he at once supplied with a fertile you7}(j queen. Before 
showing how this is done, its extraordinary advantages 
will be described. 
It sometimes happens that the mother-stock, when de¬ 
prived of its queen, perishes, either because it t.akcs no 
steps to supjdy her loss, or because it fails in the attempt. 
If it raises several queens, it may become reduced by 
after-swarming; and, at all events, its young queen must 
run the usual risks in meeting the drones. When all goes 
right, it will usu.ally be from two to three weeks before 
any eggs are l.aid in the mother-stock; and when the 
brood left by the old queen h.as all matured, the number 
of the bees will so rajiidly decrease, before any of the 
brood of the young queen hatches, that she will not have 
a fair ch.ance, seasonably to replenish the hive. 
Again; while the system that gives no hatched queen 
to the mother-stock, cxjioses it to be robbed if forage is 
scarce, the ])resence of a fertile mother emboldens it to a 
much more determined resistance. 
If the mother-stock has not been supplied with a fertile 
queen, it cannot, for a long time, part with another colony, 
without being seriously weakened. Second swarming— 
