182 
THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
best. It not only secures a reasonable increase of colonies, 
but maintains them all in high vigor; and in ordinary 
seasons will yield, in good locations, more surplus honey, 
than if all increase of colonies was discouraged. If every 
bee-keeper would adopt 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 swarm, was either supplied 
with a scaled royal cell, or left to raise a now queen from 
worker-brood. By the use of movable-comb hives , it may 
be at once supplied with a fertile young 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 takes no 
steps to supply her loss, or because it fails in the attempt. 
It it raises several queens, it may become reduced by 
aftcr-swafming; and, at all events, its young queen must 
run the usual risks in meeting the drones. When all goes 
right, it will usually be from two to three weeks before 
any eggs arc laid in the mother-stock; and when the 
brood left by the old queen has all matured, the number 
of the bees will so rapidly decrease, before any of the 
brood of the young queen hatches, that she will not have 
a fair chance, seasonably to replenish the hive. 
Again; while the system that gives no hatched queen 
to the mother-stock, exposes it to be robbed if forage is 
scarce, the presence of a fertile mother emboldens it to a 
much more determined resistance. 
It 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— 
