1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



103 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 



DOOLITTLE 



AT Borodino, New York. 



DOES THE AGE OF QUEENS GOVERN SWARM- 

 ING? 



"Mr. Doolittle, do you think that the age 

 of queens has any thing to do with the ten- 

 dency of colonies to swarm? A bee-keeper 

 from the East was at my house a few days 

 ago, and he claimed that his colonies having 

 queens only one year old were very much 

 more inclined to swarm than those having 

 older queens." 



"I hardly think that is the case, friend 

 Hunt; but to be sure that such a claim was 

 right it would be necessary to know how 

 many colonies having queens of different 

 ages were in observation, and to know what 

 proportion of them swarmed." 



" I did not think to ask him about that. I 

 myself think that colonies having the year- 

 old queens are less inclined to swarm than 

 those having two, three, or even four year 

 old In other words, my experience seems 

 to indicate that the older the queens in any 

 colonies, the more those colonies are inclined 

 to swarm." 



"Possibly you are right; but I think other 

 conditions have a greater bearing on the 

 swarming matter than the age of queens. 

 Sometimes it may be one condition, some- 

 times another, and perhaps more than one. 

 If there is a lack of ventilation, causing ex- 

 treme heat, or any other condition which 

 may render the hive decidedly uncomfort- 

 able, I have known bees to swarm without 

 even beginning the construction of queen- 

 cells.". 



"Well, now you speak of it I do believe 

 this may have much to do with swarming; 

 for one summer I had my bees in a place en^ 

 tirely surrounded with trees and buildings 

 so that scarcely a breath of air could get to 

 them, while the sun poured in on them from 

 eight in the morning, till four at night, and 

 those colonies, while left there, swarmed to 

 beat the band, as the expression goes." 



"Again, it maybe the failure of the queen 

 to lay sufficiently. Under this condition 

 queen-cells are built; and if the season of 

 the year and weather conditions are all 

 right, swarming will follow; if not, the queen 

 will be superseded. However, more fre- 

 quent}}^ it is the lack of sufficient room, or, 

 to put it more nearly correct, lack of empty 

 combs for the queen to lay in, that causes 

 swarming." 



"Yes, the bees begin to restrict the queen 

 as to the number of eggs she lays, as I have 

 sometimes expressed myself. There is a 

 whole lot tp this swarming question." 



"Now let. us. come a little closer home in 

 this matter. We.are comb-honey producers, 

 therefore we qan look into that part of the 

 matter. We can give room enough in the 

 supers, but this is mostly in the shape of 

 foundation,..Qr. only stai^ter^^of .foundation. 



instead of fully built combs; and when the 

 honey comes in freely, the bees can not 

 build out the foundation fast enough to hold 

 it; and much of that coming in from the 

 fieldsis put into the brood-nest until there 

 is not room enough for the queen to lay; and 

 the first thing we know, under such condi- 

 tions swarming begins." 



"But does not a young queen assert her 

 egg-laying proclivities even under these con- 

 ditions, so the colony is slower in making 

 preparations for swarming than a colony 

 having an older queen? " 



"After years of observation, I believe that 

 such is the case. But just why a year- old 

 queen should so assert is something I do not 

 see any adequate explanation for; but I be- 

 lieve it to be a fact all the same; and in this 

 we find a presumable reason why young 

 queens are less likely to swarm than older 

 ones. But let us not forget that more bee- 

 keepers work for extracted honey than for 

 comb honey; and with them the case is dif- 

 ferent. That changes the condition entire- 

 ly, if enough empty combs are given, the 

 queen will not be crowded, but she will have 

 all the space needed in which to lay; and, no 

 matter whether she is one, two, three, or 

 even four years old, there is not likely to be 

 any swarming until she begins to fail." 



"But do not bees swarm when worked 

 for extracted honey? " 



"Not when managed right. Quinby gave 

 us the secret nearly half a century ago when 

 he said, ' Hive a swarm in a box the inside 

 of which is a cube of four feet; and if the 

 swarm is large enough, or the apiarist helps 

 the bees to fill that box with comb, swarm- 

 ing will rarely result; but if that swarm 

 builds comb in only 2000 cubic inches in one 

 corner of the box, the bees will swarm in 

 future years about the same as they would 

 in a hive of the 2000- cubic-inch size, the empty 

 room outside of the comb built having very 

 little influence upon them. ' It is the amount 

 of empty or fully built comb that is impor- 

 tant. My experience is that, where combs 

 are supplied so that the queen has all the 

 room she can use for egg-laying, and at the 

 same time such comb supplies all the room 

 the colony wishes for the storing of honey 

 and pollen, such a colony will never swarm, 

 no matter how numerous in bees it becomes, 

 even if beyond 100,000, nor how old the 

 queen is." 



"But we can not use such a large amount 

 of comb as this when working for comb hon- 

 ey." 



" Correct; and now we are getting back to 

 •where we started. Because the using of 

 lots of comb in the brood nest is unprofitable 

 when working for comb honey, many have 

 swung to the opposite extreme and have 

 used very small hives. Where, such hives 

 are used it takes no very keen vision to see 

 that the most prolific queens,; usually the 

 youngest, will fill all of the available space 

 the quickest, and swarm the first and most 

 , often. In fact, an inferior queen might have 

 all the space needed, and not swarm when 

 in^ hijfe lQQ..sipalLtoi: a better queen.'.' .^.j. 



