116 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



SWARMING. 



Why it is Objectionable and How it May 

 be Prevented. 



R. F. Holtennann, of Ontario, has 

 been keeping bees and writing about 

 them for a great many years. Per- 

 haps friend Holtermann will not re- 

 gard as a compliment what I am about 

 to sa}', but, to me, his writings for the 

 last year have seemed of unusual value 

 — perhaps they are the ripened fruit 

 of years of experience. Perhaps my 

 own experience enables me to more 

 fully appreciate them. Be this as it 

 may, his talks at conventions, and his 

 writings, have, of late, seemed to be 

 unusually good. He has lately con- 

 tributed an article to Gleanings on the 

 question of all questions, just now, 

 swarming, what causes it, how to pre- 

 vent it, etc. I have read the article, 

 and then re-read it, something I sel- 

 dom do, and I believe it is worthy' of 

 eareful .study by all bee-keeping spe- 

 cialists. Here is what he says: — 



For some time I have seen that 

 swarming in the life's history of a 

 colony of bees is a calamity, even if 

 the colony is in the hands of an intel- 

 ligent producer. Mr. L. A. Aspinwall 

 has still better expressed it, and in lan- 

 guage none too strong, by saying, "It 

 is the bane of modern apiculture." 

 Swarming is to the honey crop what 

 rearing of calves is to the cheese and 

 butter crop. This is a fair compari- 

 parison, and the two are very closely 

 parallel. To swarming can be traced 

 in ordinary bee-keeping the majority 

 of cases of queenlessness, robbing, 

 weak colonies in the fall and spring, 

 loss of honey crop, and foul brood. It 

 means divided energy, often two to 

 lift two loads when it takes the 

 two to handle one, therefore nothing or 

 little is accomplished. That this has 

 in the past been acted upon without 

 thoughtful recognition in my case and 

 in many others is shown in our admis- 

 sion that large swaruis are expected to 

 give us yields of honey when the small 

 oft divided we set no task in that di- 

 rection. We have sought to prevent 

 swarming, largely as a matter of con- 

 venience, by not having to watch them, 

 and sometimes so as not to have the 



trouble hiving them. This alone 

 makes non-swarming a goal worthy of 

 our effort. When I look upon the 

 many hours and days spent in hot 

 summer weather watching issuing 

 swarms and hiving them, it seems to 

 me I would almost sooner go out of 

 the business than return to these prob- 

 ably antediluvian methods. 



While not completely master of the 

 situation, as I am inclined to believe 

 Mr. Aspinwall may be, yet I have got 

 a system of non-swarming very satis- 

 factory TO me, and I have very largely 

 worked it out for myself, and consulted 

 no one about it. As stated at the Chi- 

 cago convention, certain similar lines 

 of thought and certain conclusions, 

 one independent of the other, have been 

 followed out by Mr. Aspinwall and 

 myself. This is to me only added evi- 

 dence of their correctness. My methods 

 can be of use, and applied to almost 

 any modern hive, the advantages being 

 greater or less — more or less complete 

 in its application. The smaller-hive 

 man can use it to advantage, but not 

 with best results. 



Some of us may be accused of being 

 large-hive men, and that we are boom- 

 ing large hives. There is no patent 

 on the size of a hive. I have been com- 

 pelled to become a large-hive man 

 against my will ; and, had I not always 

 sought to be reasonably open to con- 

 viction would probabU' still hold me 

 in the ranks of what we now look upon 

 as baby honey-nuclei. I have sold to 

 my own profit eight-frame Langstroth 

 hives for what I could get for them, 

 afterward replacing them with the 

 twelve-frame. In the non-swarming 

 method I use, we must consider the 

 hive, the bees, their location, and the 

 method of manipulation. 



A ditch which I was willing to con- 

 cede to the enemy of large hives was 

 that the smaller hive was better 

 for comb honey. This, too, has been 

 fought for, and, in my estimation, has, 

 by solid reason, been vanquished and 

 taken. Which builds up more rapidly 

 in the spring -a two-frame nucleus or 

 an eight-frame hive ? This is easily 

 answered. To put it as favorably as 

 possible to the small-hive advocate, 

 "Which multiplies in bees the more 

 rapidly — a hive with 3,000 bees or one 

 with 12,000, other things being equal, 

 so long as they are not crowded ? The 

 larger number will double first. On 

 the same ground, a colony which never 

 swarmed in 1905 (and filled its twelve- 

 frame brood-chamber in the fall as well 

 as anotiier an eight-frame), winter and 

 other conditions being equal, will build 



