Page:How to Keep Bees.djvu/203

Rh around, revealing her gracious majesty with a few attendants, safe beneath the wire screen; for no bee-dealer would be so heartless or foolish as to send a queen on a journey without a few ladies-in-waiting to give her companionship and care.

The cage in which a queen is shipped is always tagged or labelled with directions for introducing the queen, which, if followed implicitly, almost always insures success.

The plan of a queen-cage is a cell made of wire screen with twelve to fifteen meshes to the square inch, large enough to allow the bees to thrust in their antennæ and thus get acquainted with their proposed sovereign, but not large enough to permit a sting to be effectively thrust through. The cell, itself, is large enough so that the prisoner will not suffocate if the cage is balled. At one end of the cage is an opening into which is pressed a cork of candy, over which is tacked a piece of pasteboard, through which is a central line of perforations. At first the bees are wild to get at the queen, and incidentally in their attack they get a taste of the candy through the holes in the pasteboard. This distracts their attention, and they work industriously at biting away the pasteboard to get at the candy. And by the time they have worked their way through the delectable door, their attitude towards the prisoner is naturally sweetened, and usually they accept her at once. The "Good candy" is used for this purpose, for the queen is also sustained on this confection during her incarceration,