90 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



pinching off the queen cells— a procedure 

 which worked satisfactorily in that 

 particular case. That was the beginning 

 of a non-swarming mania that has 

 possessed me ever since. Wished then 

 as I have thousands of times since that 

 there was some safe, sure and easy 

 method to prevent swarming entirely. 

 A combination of circumstances made it 

 necessary that I dispose of my bees, and 

 active professional life and the want of a 

 suitable location prevented me from 

 again taking up the work for a quarter 

 of a century. Since my first experience 

 as a bee keeper until the present I have 

 seldom talked with a bee keeper without 

 winding up by asking him how he con- 

 trolled swarming, and any article pub- 

 lished on the subject always received 

 careful reading. The very inception or 

 rather the beginning of the train of 

 thought that led up to the present treat- 

 ment was due to an article that ap- 

 peared in the American Bee Journal for 

 March 1st, 1906. on page 185 and 

 signed, "C. Davenport, Southern Minne- 

 sota." The writer stated that he had 

 discovered a treatment that would 

 absolutely prevent all swarming; that he 

 gave a treatm.ent that could be done in 

 five minutes or less and in from one to 

 fifteen days a second treatment requir- 

 ing less than two minutes. He said that 

 there was no hunting queens, no pinching 

 of queen cells, and no bumping of hives 

 around; that he had given the treatment 

 to hundreds of colonies, and that none of 

 them had swarmed; but he failed to give 

 the treatment. In the same journal for 

 July 12th, 1906, on page 602. he refuses 

 to make his treatment known, and gives 

 as his reasons that it would make bee 

 keeping too easy and honey too cheap. 

 Never having read an article on swarm- 

 ing that impressed me as that did, the 

 matter kept "simmering'" in my mind 

 for days and weeks. Sought to discover 

 the treatment he gave his bees by a pro- 

 cess of exclusion, as medical men fre- 

 quently do when they have a complica- 

 tion of symptoms, and are not just sure 

 what ails their patient. Reasoned that 

 the treatment that he gave his colonies 

 must be one of two kinds — either medical 

 or surgical. Medical treatment was soon 

 excluded as being out of the question. 

 Then it must, of necessity, be of a surgical 

 nature. Surgical treatment of the hive 

 was impossible, so the hive was elimi- 

 nated. There then remained the queen, 

 workers, drones, brood and possible 

 queen cells to be operated upon. But he 

 had stated that he did not even look for 

 the queen or queen cells, so they were 



excluded from being a factor in the 

 problem to be solved. There now re- 

 mained the workers, the drones and the 

 brood to be treated. It being a self- 

 evident proposition that he could not 

 catch all of the drones or workers and 

 operate upon them in five minutes, they 

 too were excluded, leaving only the brood 

 for a surgical operation of five minutes or 

 less. To decide what surgical operation 

 he performed on the brood was the 

 ^ hardest part of the whole proposition. 

 Thought of cutting the brood out of the 

 frames, but thought of the drone comb 

 they would build if compelled to build a 

 brood nest anew, and not knowing how 

 to dispose of the brood after cutting it 

 out, that idea was abandoned as poor 

 surgery. Then I thought of mutilating 

 the brood in some manner and also of 

 uncapping it. The uncapping scheme 

 looked the most plausible as 1 had some- 

 where read that in hives where there 

 was an excess of drone brood the bees 

 would immediately remove it from the 

 cells if it was uncapped. Why would 

 they not serve worker brood the same 

 way? This treatment looked the most 

 plausible of any that suggested itself, so I 

 determined to try it out. The idea that 

 the effect of the operation would be to 

 relieve a crowded brood nest had not as 

 yet dawned upon my mind. In due course 

 of time I found a colony building queen 

 cells preparatory to swarming out. I de- 

 termined to uncap all of the sealed brood 

 if it ruined the colony. In two days after 

 uncapping the brood I made an examina- 

 tion of the hive and found the capped 

 queen cells torn down, the young queens 

 removed, and the bees made no further 

 preparations to swarm that season. 

 Candor compels me to say that they did 

 not do anything else to boast of. Too 

 much dwindling and not enough recruits 

 to reinforce the workers. They built up 

 in good shape and were strong in numbers 

 for the fall flow. Did not try any further 

 experiments on any of the colonies during 

 1906. When 1907 season was on, I 

 operated upon two colonies, leaving some 

 of the sealed brood to reinforce the 

 workers. Again in 1908 tried the treat- 

 ment upon a few colonies successfully, 

 concluding before the season was over 

 that two solid frames of brood in each 

 hive was sufficient to make good the 

 losses of the field bees. Not having 

 enough bees at any time to give the 

 treatment a thorough test, it was de- 

 ferred until the past season (1909) to 

 try it out. Will digress enough to state 

 that my confidence in this treatment was 

 further strengthened by an article written 



