assisted in their operations. As soon as the hive is
well filled with bees, this need no longer be done.

Even the most careful and experienced Apiarian will find, too often,
that although he is perfectly well aware of the plague that is reigning
within, his knowledge can be turned to no good account, the interior of
the hive being almost as inaccessible as the interior of the human body.
The way in which I manage, in such cases, is as follows.

Having ascertained, in the Spring, as soon as the bees begin to fly out,
that a colony although feeble, has a fertile queen, I take the
precaution at once to give it the strength which is indispensable, not
merely to its safety, but to its ability for any kind of successful
labor.

As a certain number of bees are needed in a hive, in order as well to
warm and hatch the thousands of eggs which a healthy queen can lay, as
to feed and properly develop the larvae after they are hatched, I know
that a feeble colony must remain feeble for a long time, unless they can
at once be supplied with a considerable accession of numbers. Even if
there were no moths in existence to trouble such a hive, it would not be
able to rear a large number of bees, until after the best of the
honey-harvest had passed away: and then it would become powerful only
that its increasing numbers might devour the food which the others had
previously stored in the cells. If the small colony has a considerable
number of bees, and is able to cover and warm at least one comb in
addition to those containing brood which they already have, I take from
one of my strong stocks, a frame containing some three or four thousand
or more young bees, which are sealed over in their cells, and are just
ready to emerge. These bees which require no food, and need nothing but
warmth to develop them, will, in a few days, hatch in the new hive to
which they are given, and thus the requisite number of workers, in the
full vigor and energy of youth, will be furnished to the hive, and the
discouraged queen, finding at once a suitable number of experienced
nurses[23] to take charge of her eggs, deposits them in the proper
cells, instead of simply extruding them, to be devoured by the bees.
While bees often attack full grown strangers which are introduced into
their hive, they never fail to receive gladly all the brood comb that we
choose to give them. If they are sufficiently numerous, they will always
cherish it, and in warm weather, th