396 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc 



best workers, the very ones we want to breed from, are the ones that 

 give the fewest swarms. 



Fortunately it is not a difficult thing to multiply colonies without 

 any natural swarming. Indeed, such multiplication is altogether 

 top easy for most beginners. No other mistake is so likely to be 

 made by the novice who has once made a beginning at artificial in- 

 crease as to increase too rapidly. He closes the season with a 

 large number of colonies, to be sure, but they are weaklings that 

 will not endure the winter, and the following summer finds him no 

 farther ahead than a year previous. If, instead of making a three 

 or four-fold increase, he had been satisfied with an increase of 50 

 per cent., he would have got on more rapidly in the long run. There 

 are two things that can hardly be insisted upon too much for a be- 

 ginner to observe: 1. Go slow in the matter of increase. 2. Be 

 sure that everj' colony before winter sets in has abundance of stores. 



Knowing that bees without a queen will proceed to rear one if 

 they have young brood present, the beginner will understand how 

 easy it is to start a new colony. He need only take part of the 

 brood and the bees from a hive and put them in a new place and 

 the work is done; the bees will do the rest. And if the colony be 

 divided up into two or more parts, there will be more new colonies; 

 so, if there are eight frames of brood in a hive, he will start eight 

 new colonies, each one having one frame of brood. In the course 

 of time he will learn that all is not gold that glitters. If no precau- 

 tions are taken, the bees will not stay with the brood when put in a 

 new place. Some of his little colonies wnll fail to rear queens. 

 Some of them will rear queens that will disappear before they get to 

 laying. Those that do succeed in rearing queens that lay will have 

 queens of little value. So he will be w^orse off than if he had at- 

 tempted no increase. 



Before attempting any considerable increase in the way indicated, 

 it would be well to study carefully what has been said about queens 

 and nuclei. Remember that the queen is the soul of the colony; 

 that without a good queen there is no such a thing as success, and 

 that a good queen will not be reared by giving young brood to a mere 

 handful of bees. 



It would take up entirely too much space to give all the plans for 

 artificial increase, or artifi<'ial swarming, as it is sometimes called. 

 A few may be given here, and the reader will be the judge as to 

 what will best suit his needs. With experience, other plans will 

 suggest themselves, or modifications and combinations of these. 



SIMPLE DIVIDING. 



About the simplest of iill ways is to take one-half the combs with 

 adhering bees from a colony and put them in an empty hive on a new 



