EXPERIMENTS IN APIARY. 
9 
menced to work again on the raspberry. We fed all the 
honey we found in the old stands, which stimulated the 
queen and bees, so that by the 10th of June there were six 
frames full of brood, and we felt safe to start our nuclei. 
A nucleus is a small hive holding two or three frames, 
in which you rear young queens. We started two, taking 
from the old hive two frames full of brood and fresh-laid 
eggs, with all the bees adhering to them. Each frame was 
placed in a nucleus with two frames of empty comb ; we also 
replaced the two frames taken from the old hive, with .two 
frames of empty worker comb. 
If a swarm of bees lose their queen at any time of year 
when there are fresh-laid eggs in the comb, less than three 
days old, the bees will at once proceed to supply themselves 
with a new queen ; this they do by constructing a number of 
queen cells, sometimes as many as twenty, generally from 
five to twelve ; in each they place a worker egg or larva, and 
feed it on what is called “ royal jelly.” This egg, if left in 
a Avorker cell, and fed upon worker food, would have grown 
to be a worker bee; but with the royal jelly as food, de¬ 
velops into a queen. In eight days from the laying of the 
egg, the bees seal up her cell to allow her to undergo the 
final transformation. On the sixteenth day from the 
egg, the queen is full grown, and if left undisturbed will 
hatch a perfect queen. The best way is, to take the queen 
away from an old swarm of bees, and after they have 
started their queen cells and have them sealed over, to cut 
the same out and insert these into the comb of the nucleus ; 
but, having only one swarm to start with, we could not do 
this without destroying our chance for increase. 
The morning after the nuclei were started, there were 
several queen cells in progress of construction. 
June 20, started another nucleus in the same manner, 
only cut a queen cell out of one of our first nnclei, and in¬ 
serted the same into the comb of the new one, so that on 
June 20, we had three nuclei with virgin queens. 
