SWARMING AND ITS CONTROL* 

 R. F. HOLTERMANN, BrANTFORD, OnT., C AT? ADA. 



In the (lays of long ago, yes even in more recent times and it 

 may safely be said of many at the present time, the bees choose 

 their own time for swanning and many a beekeeper can safely 

 lay the shipwreck of his hopes, as a beekeeper, to his inability to 

 control the swanning impulse in his bees and departure of his 

 season's profits from a colony with the departure of the first 

 swarm in the absence of its owner. 



There are those who have a fair knowledge of beekeeping, they 

 in fact know enough of beekeeping to make a moderate success 

 of the business could they only control the swarming impulse, 

 but as their main business does not allow them to watch for 

 swarms during the hours that they may issue, they run the seri- 

 ous risk of losing them. 



Again, what apiarist who has engaged in beekeeping accord- 

 ing to old and well-known methods, when with an apiary of say one 

 hundred colonies he has been kept busy a large portion of the 

 swarming hours in pi-oviding for issuing swainns, or even fol- 

 lowed them to difficult heights and places and then has managed 

 them on the nonswarming plan, has gone back to the first system ? 

 I venture to say, speaking from personal experience, none. 



In studying the control of swarming it is of necessity desir- 

 able to know the cause. The beekeeper who seeks to find the 

 cause in any one specific thing is, in my estimation, on the wrong 

 track. Some varieties of bees swarm more readily than others. 

 In one hive a colony may swarm, when a larger entrance to the 

 hive and facilities for ventilation might have prevented swarming. 

 In another there is abundant facilities for ventilation but the hive 

 has become crowded and the bees require room. ■ 



In still another case the queen is failing, the bees start super- 

 sedure cells and when the young qiieen hatches the hive throws 

 a swarm, when otherwise the impulse would not have developed. 



It is now quite a number of years since I made the public 



* Given at the Convention of the New York State Association of Beekeepers 

 Societies at Syracuse, N. Y., January, 1912. 



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