METHOD NUMBER TWO
My favorite way of preparing bees for cell-building is given in Method No. 1. No doubt many will say they cannot do any thing of the kind; ’tis too fussy and takes too much time, etc. It is not fussy nor in any way difficult to perform. However, I will give two other methods for preparing bees for cell-building, making a colony queenless, etc.
We must start in the same as in case No. 1, that is, the sections must be removed the day previous.
Now proceed in the usual way of “drumming out” a swarm. The proper way to do this, and the way I practiced artificial swarming, or dividing a colony of bees, is as follows: Blow rottenwood smoke among the bees through the entrance; this so alarms the colony that all the bees commence to fill their sacs with honey. By drumming on sides of the hive, while smoking is being done, greatly helps in the operation.
When the bees seem ready to go up into the cap, more smoke should be introduced and a vigorous drumming on the hive kept up. In this way about two-thirds of the colony will run up into the cap. Now give them a few minutes to sort of settle down and become quiet. Remove the cap, invert it and throw a cloth over the box. Give the bees a few puffs of tobacco smoke under the cloth. In a few minutes the cloth can be removed, the queen hunted out and the bees dumped into a box same as described in Method No. 1.
By this plan bees, in either box or frame hives, can be utilized for queen-rearing. The queen can be re-introduced at once.
In a few hours, bees thus prepared, will be ready to build queen-cells and all that is necessary to do is to proceed as in case of No. 1.