157. Package handling instructions. With the hive in the position where it is to remain permanently, place the package in the hive as explained in paragraph 155. Do this as quietly as possible and without the use of smoke. After removing the feeder can from the package, to provide an exit from the cage, lift out the queen cage. You will usually find this suspended in the bees by a piece of frame wire. Pull the cage out, remove the wire from the cage and place cage as explained in paragraph 155. You may even lay the cage on top of the package from which the bees are emerging, screen side up. Place her in a position so she will be as nearly under the hole in the inner cover as possible. Always place the cage in such a way that the bees can get onto the screen at all times. After removing paper from end of queen cage so the bees can get at the cage candy and release her, do not handle the cage again. The idea of placing the queen cage nearly under the escape hole is to have her where the bees are most likely to cluster under the feeder. If the bees cluster away from the queen cage and nights are cold, she may become chilled, and either die or shortly be superseded as she fails in strength. Some take a lead pencil and push it through the queen cage candy making a hole nearly but not large enough for the bees to pass through at once. This effects earlier release of the queen. The feeder can which comes with the package may be thrown away. Dump the syrup left in this can into the feeder you are about to put on the package bees. Do not disturb the bees in any way during this job.

158. Package Handling Instructions. If you have any drawn combs to give packages, place them next to the cage in the hive. Thus the bees cluster on this comb and immediately have a place to store the syrup. Likewise, they will so store the syrup you are to feed them. If you have part drawn combs and part full sheets of foundation, place the combs next to the package and the foundation at the side. If you have only foundation, the arrangement of the frames makes no difference. Most important is to have combs of foundation directly beneath the hole in the inner cover. If you have combs with some honey, place them next to the package in the hive. It is better not to use combs entirely filled with honey, as these "slabs" of honey are often so cold the bees dislike clustering on them.

Here are three important things after the package is in and the frames and queen cage properly placed: 1. Close up the hive as soon as possible. 2. Put the feeder on at once over the hole in the inner cover. (See figure 11, also paragraph 13.) 3. Do not open the hive again for a week. You may of course, remove the cover, refill and replace the feeder, but do not remove the inner cover or open the hive otherwise for a week. More queens fail of introduction from needless examination than possibly any other cause. If necessary, put the packages into the hive at any time of day.

Here is one more very important thing to do. Stuff the hive entrance full of green grass at once. This prevents flying until the bees are settled. The grass allows ventilation and may remain in the entrance until it has wilted so the bees begin to get in and out through it. Then the grass may be removed and the regular entrance stopper put on, but put it on to provide the smallest entrance. Enlarge the entrance later as required. It does the bees no harm to be confined to the hive until the grass wilts. Do not disturb the package at this stage as you may lose the queen before she has become properly introduced and started laying.

159. To find eggs in a honeycomb, stand with your back toward the sun, hold the comb in your hands in such a position that the light strikes clear into the bottom of the cells. The eggs are tiny white nit-like objects about the size of a pin head but of a more elongated shape. See illustration No. 35.

160. Reliable breeders ship only young bees in packages and these should build up quite rapidly if conditions are at all favorable. However, the queen must be prolific, weather conditions must be favorable, and plenty of food must be available either from natural sources or from feeding. When the packages being built up to full colonies completely occupy the hive, they should be managed in the same way as any other full colony fully described in other places throughout this book.

161. The making of increase of your colonies by removing brood and bees from full colonies now in your apiary is almost certain to decrease your honey flow in most northern localities. The removal of any material part of the combs, bees or brood, form a full colony, materially reduces the prospects of surplus honey from that colony. Remember that in so removing bees from your own colonies to make increase, in the north, that you are doing this under conditions when your main honey flow is most likely near at hand, just the opposite of conditions in the south, where the bulk of the bees are shipped.

162. If you will refer to paragraph 133 you will find that we carried you along in the work of extracted honey production up to the point of using a successful method for swarm control. Perhaps you wondered at that point what would be done with the brood placed above the queen excluder of the colony, and here is a way it may be used for the making of increase. Nine days after the colonies have been manipulated, two to five frames of emerging brood with adhering bees and at least one good queen cell may be taken from the top hive bodies of each colony. The space from which they were removed should be filled either with drawn combs or full sheets of foundation. The frames of brood and bees removed may then be placed in another hive already prepared and placed in another position in the apiary. It is usually a good plan to entirely close the entrance of the newly made hive with green grass to prevent any bees returning at that time to the hive from which they were removed. This is essential if the weather is cool, but remember that this type of increase should usually only be made at the time when some honey flow is on. The use of green grass is proposed as it does not entirely shut off the colony from the outside air so that if the temperature is high colonies will not smother nor the combs melt down. The grass dries up and withers in the course of a few days and then automatically makes a small entrance, gradually increasing when the grass may be entirely removed. It is important to make such a nucleus strong enough so that it will at least build up into a full colony by frost time, and by a full colony we mean one well stocked with honey along the lines covered in Chapter I.