Another way to do, and a thing I often do is this: I sometimes purchase bees in box-hives, transfer the combs and then put bees and combs in a hive that takes 13 of the frames, using two sections for a large colony. The 26 combs give a large amount of breeding room and such a colony very quickly builds up to a large and prosperous one. Such a hive is illustrated in fig. [8].
Figure 8
The bees thus treated soon repair the combs and get into fine condition to be transferred to the small hives. When nuclei are formed as above, they should be kept confined in the hives from 24 to 48 hours before being released, then remove the screens at night when too late for bees to fly. The next morning the colony will be found ready for business.
By this time the bees will have more or less queen-cells, or cell-cups started, and fully reconciled to the new state of things, and only a few of the older bees will return to the stand they had previously occupied.
The only thing that can be done with these hives is to set them on the ground in any place in the apiary. Still, it is a good idea to take them away from home for several weeks when they may be returned to the home yard and no bees would return to the old location.
I sometimes have several queen-rearing yards two miles apart where my nuclei are kept during the entire season—several hundred nucleus colonies are made up and at once taken away and in this way our apiaries are established, but for nuclei only.
If more convenient to do so bees may be brought from a distance for forming nucleus colonies, and when this method is practiced the bees can be placed in the home yard. This plan works nicely as I have found when forming nuclei.
INTRODUCING QUEENS
We have now come to one of the most interesting parts of apiculture, and that part of queen-rearing that has been the cause of much trouble and a great deal of discussion for many years. When it comes to the introduction of queens, either fertile or unfertile, nearly all bee-keepers, whether experts or novices, are all at sea.