SWARMING. 



432 



SWARMING. 



sometimes goto work; but more often swarm 

 out again within a few hours, or the next 

 day. If you keep putting them back they 

 will soon attack and kill their queen, then 

 loaf about until they can rear a new one and 

 swarm again. This is very poor policy, and 

 we can by no means afford to have such 

 work. If they swarmed for want of room, 

 they may go to work all right, after having 

 room given them. If they come out the sec- 

 ond time, we should give them a new loca- 

 tion, divide them, or do something to satis- 

 fy their natural craving for starting a new 

 colony, otherwise they may loaf, even if they 

 do not try to swarm again. 



To go back : Suppose they get a queen or 

 queens having wings, and cluster in one 

 large body. In this case you should scoop 

 off bees from the cluster with the swarm- 

 ing-bag, a tin pan, or a dipper, as may be 

 most convenient, and apportion parts, made 

 about as nearly of the size of a swarm as 

 may be, about in different hives. Give each 

 hive a comb containing eggs and larvse as 

 before, and then get a queen for each one if 

 you can. In dividing them up, should you 

 get two or more queens in a hive they will 

 be balled as we have before described, and 

 you can thus easily find them. Where more 

 than one queen is in a hive, you will find a 

 ball of bees, perhaps the size of a walnut or 

 hen's egg, about them, and this can be car- 

 ried to the colony having none. When you 

 can not tell at once which are queenless , you 

 will be able to do so in a few hours by the 

 queen-cells they have started. If you are 

 more anxious for honey than bees, you may 

 allow two swarms to work together; and if 

 given sufficient room you will probably get a 

 large crop of honey from them; but this plan 

 does not pay, as a general thing, because the 

 extra bees will soon die off by old age, and 

 your colony remains no larger than where 

 the queen retains only her ordinary number 

 of bees. 



PREVENTION OF SWARMING. 



If we can entirely prevent swarming, and 

 keep the bees at home storing honey all the 

 season, we sometimes get large crops from 

 a single hive. Whether we shall get more 

 in that way than from the old stock and all 

 the increase, where swarming and after- 

 swarming is allowed, is a matter as yet hard- 

 ly decided. Should a swarm come out in 

 May, and the young queens get to laying in 

 their hives by the first of June, their work- 

 ers would be ready for the basswood-bloom 

 in July, and it is very likely that the workers 



from three queens would gather more honey 

 than those from the old queen alone. J3ut 

 another point is to be considered. The 

 two or three new colonies must have stores 

 for winter; and as it takes nearly 25 lbs. to 

 carry a colony through until honey comes 

 again, this amount would be saved by the 

 prevention of swarming. Where one has 

 plenty of bees, and desires honey rather than 

 increase, a non-swarming apiary becomes 

 quite desirable. 



This subject is a mooted one, and some of 

 our best and most experienced bee-keepers 

 confess they have been baffled in their efforts 

 to confine swarming within reasonable lim- 

 its. Usually it is not desirable to prevent first 

 swarms. Second swarms or after-swarms 

 are the ones we should like to control. Some 

 prominent bee-keepers practice cutting out 

 all queen-cells but one eight days after the 

 issue of the first swarm ; that is, they allow 

 all the unsealed larvse to become capped 

 over, leaving no opportunity for further 

 building of cells. If only one cell is left in 

 the hive, of course only one queen can be 

 hatched and reared. If she is successfully 

 fertilized the colony will generally settle 

 down to business. Excessive swarming is 

 often induced by a number of young queens 

 being allowed to mature about the same 

 time. These unfertile queens will be pretty 

 apt to keep up swarming in the hive so long 

 as there is a surplus of queens. See After- 

 swarms. 



prevention of swarsiing by caging or 

 removing the queen. 



Hetherington, Elwood, and some others, 

 have practiced caging or removing the 

 queen during the honey harvest. Of course, 

 no swarm will issue regularly where no 

 queen is in the hive; and if no cells are al- 

 lowed to hatch, prevention is accomplished. 

 When the harvest has commenced, before 

 giving the bees a chance to swarm, the queen 

 is caged in the hive, or, perhaps, preferably 

 given to a nucleus. If queen-cells are not 

 already started they certainly will be on re- 

 moval of the queen; and if the queen is caged 

 they will just as certainly be started in a 

 short time. In any case they must be cut 

 out before there is any danger of the queen 

 hatching. If all the cells are destroyed at 

 the time of removing the queen, then a sec- 

 ond time, eight days later, and a third time 

 eight days later still, there will be no possi- 

 bility of any swarming. The advocates of 

 this plan claim that the bees that could be 

 raised from eggs laid during the time the 



