A queen cannot ordinarily be transferred from one hive to another and given her freedom at once. She must be inclosed in a cage to protect here from the workers till the latter become reconciled to her and accept her as their queen. Queens received through the mails come in a mailing introducing cage. Follow the instructions that accompany them. They will tell you to first be sure the hive you wish to requeen is queenless (See "Queenlessness"). It is all right to kill or remove the queen at the time the new one is put in. Place the cage wire face downward between two combs just above the brood. Press the combs together to hold the cage. You will notice that one compartment of the cage is filled with candy which may be reached by the bees of the colony through a hole in the end of the cage which is usually protected with a small strip of blotting paper. Daub a little honey on this to give them a good start. Close the hive and do not disturb it for a week. The bees will gnaw away the paper and eat their way through the candy by thereby releasing the queen in about thirty-six hours time. If accepted the queen should begin laying in a day or two. She will not be fully accepted until she has laid several days.

If the colony is disturbed in the meantime the workers may ball and kill her. It is always more difficult to introduce queens in the presence of robbing or when nectar is scarce. On the other hand when a heavy flow is on queens may be introduced directly without a cage provided the colony to be requeened has only been queenless a few hours and the queen to be introduced is taken from a hive or nucleus in the same yard. Blow a half dozen heavy blasts of dense smoke into the entrance of the hive then close it for a couple of minutes. Now open it a little and allow the new queen to run in. Close it again for a minute then open it wide. The smoke method seems to be a failure in some yards due no doubt to the temper of the bees. It is always attended with considerable loss and never a success when robbing is going on at all.

Queens that have been confined in a cage a day or more are out of egg laying condition. They are smaller and less acceptable to the workers on short notice than one just caged. It seems that success in introducing queens direct by the smoke method is conditioned upon the bees failing to discover that queens have been switched on them. A colony which has been queenless a long time is apt to be very reluctant to accept an introduced queen. The difficulty seems to be that there are no young bees left in the hive. Such a colony should be given several combs of hatching brood from another colony at the time the queen is introduced. The candy hole in the cage should be plugged up with a cork for two days in order to extend the period of introduction. Meantime the young bees which will emerge from the brood will aid in restoring the colony to a normal condition.