82 Farmers’ Bulletin 1198. 
UTILIZING THE PARENT COLONY FOR PRODUCTION. 
In the usual plan for hiving natural swarms, the swarm is used 
as the producing colony, the parent colony being deprived of most of 
its bees to give greater strength to the swarm. |The massing of most 
of the bees of both the swarm and the parent colony into one hive is 
necessary for best results when swarming occurs during the honey- 
flow and especially so when the honey-flow is short. It is, however, 
sometimes desirable to mass the bees together in the parent colony 
instead of in the swarm. This may be accomplished by returning the 
swarm without the queen to the hive from which it came. Seven days 
later all but one of the queencells should be destroyed. the remaining 
cell being left to requeen the colony. 
Great care must be taken in destroying the queencells to be sure 
that only one is left, for if more than one queencell is left the colony 
may be expected to swarm soon after the first young queen emerges. 
It is usually necessary to shake most of the bees from each comb as 
the combs are examined for queencells in order to be sure that no 
queencells are overlooked. The comb containing the queencell that is 
to be left should not be shaken, since if this is done the immature 
queen may be injured. 
It sometimes happens that some colonies treated in this way will 
swarm soon after the young queen emerges from the one cell that was. 
left, leaving the parent colony greatly depleted in bees and hopelessly 
queenless. Again, the queen may fail to emerge, in which case, unless 
a queen or another queencell is supplied promptly, the colony, being 
hopelessly queenless, works with reduced energy and later, of course, 
would become depleted. For these reasons some beekeepers prefer to 
destroy all the queencells five days after the swarm has issued, then 
again five days later, at which time a young laying queen is introduced 
by means of an ordinary introducing cage. 
By hiving the swarm back into its own hive without the queen and 
permitting the colony to rear only one young queen, or leaving them 
queenless 10 days and then introducing a laying queen, the colony is 
left in a condition comparable to the parent colony in nature, except 
that it retains all of the workers instead of losing the bees of the 
swarm. Such colonies usually do not swarm again the same season. 
This method does not require extra hives and equipment, but it prob- 
ably involves some loss in the less energetic work while the colonies 
are queenless. 
TREATMENT TO ANTICIPATE SWARMING. 
The emphasis given to the care of natural swarms on the preceding 
pages is largely for the purpose of bringing out the principles which 
underlie the successful methods used to anticipate swarming. Com- 
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