The knife used to separate the cells should be very thin, sharp and warm. If a cell is cut into, just take a piece of thin foundation, slightly warm it, place it over the aperture and at once smooth it down with a warm knife so that it will be perfectly air-tight, if not so done, the queen might not hatch out, and she certainly would not if she is not within six hours of being ready to. If a patched cell is given to a nucleus colony, and not made perfectly air-tight, the bees would quickly destroy it. Bees will not accept any inferior work about queen-cells. Perfection is their motto. Nevertheless, I sometimes think bees lack in judgment in many things; such for instance as in destroying a fine young queen when they seem badly in need of one. But they lack in judgment very much when they use their stings to their own destruction. DESCRIPTION OF PIPE FOR BURNING TOBACCO I have always used tobacco smoke for light handling of bees, but more particularly for introducing queens. I shall state here that for general use in the apiary tobacco is not the thing to burn. Doing light work and temporary use the tin pipe can be made to work all right. As I am constantly working in my queen-rearing apiary, I find tobacco smoke much the handiest, as well as the most convenient. I do not wish any reader to think I recommend the filthy weed because I am a tobacco fiend. Although I have used the vile stuff in my apiary more than forty years, I have not been able to acquire the tobacco habit. So it will be seen that in order for me to use tobacco about my bees, I must have some special device to burn the stuff in. I devised the pipe illustrated in fig. 13 many years ago. Body of pipe is about 6 inches long × ⅞ in. in diameter and made of tin. At each end is a wooden stopper, one a mouth piece, the other has a ¼ in. tin tube running through it and projecting about an inch beyond the wood through which the smoke is directed among the bees. [Illustration: Figure 13] The pipe is filled with fine, dry tobacco, and is lighted by placing the small tube in the mouth and puffing away the same as any old smoker does when he puts fire to his old T. D. When the pipe is well fired up, the mouth piece is put in and all that is needed to break up a town meeting is to blow the breath through the pipe. Full colonies of bees can be handled by using tobacco smoke, but they do not take kindly to it, and sometimes resent the insult with a vengeance. A good bellows smoker filled with dry, rotten wood is much the best thing to use when opening a hive of bees. But in introducing queens and light work, in the apiary, the tin pipe will be found very valuable. Of course no one would think of using tobacco when extracting. In putting up queens I find the pipe very handy. It is held between the teeth, the cage in the left hand and the queen and bees handled with the right hand, as both hands are at liberty. Well, how handy!