BEES. 29 
results if too much new brood is produced. A beginner had _ better 
leave the quantity of brood to the bees. 
It is desirable early in the season, before any preparations are made 
for swarming, to go through the apiary and clip one wing of each 
queen (see p. 30). This should be done before the hive becomes too 
populous. It is perhaps best to clip queens as they are introduced, 
but some colonies may rear new ones without the knowledge of the 
owner, and a spring examination will insure no escaping swarms. 
The beginner should perhaps be warned not to clip the wings of a 
virgin queen. 
Queens sometimes die during the winter and early spring, and since 
there is no brood from which the bees can replace them, the queenless 
colonies are ‘‘hopelessly queenless.”’ Such colonies are usually rest- 
less and are not active in pollen gathering. If, on opening a colony, 
it is found to be without a queen and reduced in numbers, it should 
be united with another colony by smoking both vigorously and caging 
the queen in the queen-right colony for a day or two to prevent her 
being killed. A frame or two of brood may be added to a queenless 
colony, not only to increase its strength, but to provide young brood 
from which they can rear a queen. Bee keepers in the North can 
frequently buy queens from southern breeders early in the spring and 
naturally this is better than leaving the colony without a queen until 
the bees can rear one, as it is important that there be no stoppage in 
brood rearing at this season. 
SWARM MANAGEMENT AND INCREASE. 
The excessive rearing of brood at the wrong season or increase 
in the number of colonies greatly reduces the surplus honey crop by 
consumption. The ideal to which all progressive bee keepers work, 
when operating simply for honey, is to stimulate brood rearing to 
prepare bees for gathering, to retard breeding when it is less desir- 
able, and to prevent swarming. Formerly the measure of success 
in beekeeping was the amount of increase by swarming, but this is 
now recognized as being quite the contrary of success. 
The stimulation of brood rearing in the spring, however, makes 
it more likely that swarming will occur; so that the operator must 
counteract the tendency to swarm. This is especially true in comb- 
honey production. Very few succeed in entirely preventing swarm- 
ing, but by various methods the situation can be largely controlled. 
When a swarm issues, it usually first settles on a limb of a tree or 
bush near the apiary. It was formerly common to make a noise by 
beating pans or ringing bells in the belief that this causes the swarm 
to settle. There is no foundation for such action on the part of the 
bee keeper. If the bees alight on a small limb that can be spared 
447 
