It requires some experience and practice to introduce fertile queens. Allow all full colonies to be queenless three days before giving them a strange queen. Even a queen removed from a colony but twenty-fours, if returned would be received as a strange queen. Now when the colony has been queenless seventy-two hours, give the bees tobacco smoke and let the queen in; or allow the bees to eat the candy-food out and liberate her. The smoke from a cigar or pipe will do to introduce fertile queens, but not virgin queens.

Never put a queen near the bees of a colony she is to be given to until ready to introduce her. Many make this mistake. Toward dark is the time to introduce queens whether or not tobacco is used. Certainly this has been my experience.

In introducing queens by using tobacco it is not necessary to give the bees a powerful dose of smoke. Give enough smoke so that the bees will feel the effects of it pretty well. The tobacco sort of odorizes the combs, bees and queen, so that all are scented alike. When the bees recover from the effects of the smoke they really don’t remember whether they were ever without a queen, so they take kindly to the new queen and no trouble ensues.

I once tried a “chew” of tobacco. Was on my way to school. In a short time I didn’t care whether school kept or not, in fact, I hardly knew anything about it I was so sick. That was my first and last “chew” of tobacco. Now I imagine the bees feel somewhat in that way when they are made sick by tobacco.

Bees cannot be killed by tobacco if they are given the air. The plantain leaves by which the entrance hole is stopped is thrown out, or so loosened before the next morning that the bees get all the air they need. One passing by the hives in which queens were introduced the previous evening cannot discover that such work was done by any indications about the hive or bees.