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are in use the operation is sufficiently easy, but should not be attempted without the protection afforded by a Bee-dress and a thick pair of wollen gloves. The services of an assistant similarly accoutred will be found very useful, but are not absolutely indispensable.
The middle of a fine day is the best time for the operation, which should be commenced by removing the stock a little either to the right or left of its usual position, which must be occupied by an empty hive, from which the top board and comb-bars have been removed. The top board of the full hive must then be shifted on one side sufficiently to expose a single bar, which may be carefully withdrawn after the attachments of the comb have been severed from the back and front of the hire by a bent knife. Both sides of the comb must be rigidly scrutinised, and any cluster of Bees gently dispersed with a feather, until it becomes evident that the queen is not present, when it may be placed in the empty hive. The same process must be repeated with each successive comb until the queen is discovered and secured, when the Bees may be either allowed to remain in the hive to which they have been transferred, or replaced in their original domicile. Sometimes the queen is not to be found on any of the combs, but may be detected among the stragglers remaining in the hive. In practised hands her discovery may be reckoned on with tolerable certainty during the first removal; but if she succeed in escaping detection the process must be repeated until she is secured.
Should the Bee-keeper be unable to perform the operation of driving, fumigation may be resorted to and the queen secured whilst the Bees are in a state of insensibility.
Should the queen have been removed, and the Bees restored to their original hive and position in the apiary, measures must now be taken to introduce the Italian sovereign to her future subjects. The first step will be carefully to remove the lid of the small box, replacing it with a slip of perforated zinc without permitting the Bees to escape. The whole must then be inverted over an opening in the top of the hive containing the queenless stock, where it should remain undisturbed till the next day, when the perforated zinc divider may be withdrawn, and the union will be complete. The small box itself need not be removed till the third day, when the Bees will be found to have quitted it.
After the lapse of about thirty days young Ligurians may, probably, be discovered taking their flight.
MULTIPLYING SWARMS OF LIGURIANS.
Presuming that the Ligurian queens are in bar hives, and that they prove themselves fairly prolific mothers, let a number of similar bar hives be provided, and into each of these, from time to time, during the course of the summer, let there be carefully transferred from the Ligurian stock a bar with comb attached, containing eggs and young Bees in every stage of progress.
It would be well that every full-grown Bee should be previously swept off this comb back into the old hive, so as to prevent all danger of fighting between them and the Bees of the other stocks to which the comb is to be given. Then, in the middle of a warm and sunny day, when the Bees are chiefly abroad, let this comb, carefully fixed in an empty bar hive, be put in the place of any strong stock of common Bees that may be available for the purpose. This stock may be removed to some distance; but it would be well first so to disturb it as to cause a good many more of the Bees to leave it than might happen to be foraging in the fields; and, moreover to stop up its entrance till the evening. The ether Bees would soon take possession of the empty bar hive, and in three weeks' time replace their missing English queen with a young artificially-reared Ligurian queen, whose progeny would, in due course of time, become the sole possessors of the hive. The English stocks chosen for this purpose must be in the same, or in a very closely-adjoining apiary, otherwise the absence of Ligurian drones at the proper season would prove fatal to the success of this plan of increase.
One Ligurian stock losing one bar only, from time to time, might in this manner become the parent of a dozen stocks at least in the same season; and the earliest of the young swarms , might also, in a warm spring, be made productive of two or three swarms in the same manner, without becoming too much weakened. Indeed, two bars may be taken every week out of the Ligurian stock during the months of May, June, and July; and these swarms, artificially formed, in the manner above detailed, may be worked during at least a whole month, from the middle of June to the middle of July.
One good Ligurian stock should be left pretty much to itself, so as to encourage the propagation of drones. Still, even this stock might be made to yield a few bars without in the least rendering the development of drones; but no bars should be taken out till a fair number have been seen abroad. Perhaps the best plan would be to make a swarm out of this hive in the same artificial manner, so soon as many drones are hatched. For drones which join swarms are generally allowed to remain alive till late in the season, whereas the earliest-hatched drones are frequently destroyed in cold springs in their own hives.
BEE-KEEPER'S CALENDAR.
JANUARY.
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