Full colonies of bees can be handled by using tobacco smoke, but they do not take kindly to it, and sometimes resent the insult with a vengeance.
A good bellows smoker filled with dry, rotten wood is much the best thing to use when opening a hive of bees. But in introducing queens and light work, in the apiary, the tin pipe will be found very valuable. Of course no one would think of using tobacco when extracting. In putting up queens I find the pipe very handy. It is held between the teeth, the cage in the left hand and the queen and bees handled with the right hand, as both hands are at liberty. Well, how handy!
WHAT TO DO WITH SMALL NUCLEI IN THE FALL
If the queens are allowed to stay in the little hives late in the season and long enough to fill the combs with brood, and the colonies are well fed, there will be a fine lot of bees in the fall when all the queens have been taken away, and they may be united and wintered in good condition.
Make hives in two sections same as illustrated in fig. [8]. These hives are the same in every way as the little boxes excepting they are made to take 13 combs instead of four combs. Use two sections in winter as this gives sufficient capacity for wintering a large numbers of bees. In three days after the queens are removed from the nuclei, they are in condition to be safely united with little or no trouble. Get the winter hive ready, give it a stand near the nucleus the queen is in that is to be given the united colonies, and then take the queenless nuclei to that stand and at once place bees, combs and all in the large hive. Put in as much brood as possible, placing it in the center of the hive.
Now the tobacco pipe described above comes in here pretty handily. Just give each small colony a puff of smoke before starting them, and all the bees and queen will at once adapt themselves to their new home. Few if any bees will return to the old stand. Feed the newly formed colonies about 20 lbs. syrup to which several pounds of good honey has been added to prevent granulation.
Above illustration gives a partial view of the author’s queen-rearing apiary. The person on the left is S. M. Locke, former editor of the American Apiculturist; on the right is the author. This photo was taken in the summer of 1882. There has been but little change in my apiary since the picture was made.
When cold weather sets in, put the colonies in the cellar. In the spring when placed on the stand, put on outside cases, fix them up warm and if need be feed more syrup, and my word for it, you will have some fine colonies with which to form early nuclei when needed.
I had nuclei enough in the fall of 1892 to form 21 strong colonies of the kind above mentioned.