294 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



^LVY 1 



flat; slavery was a dixine iiislilution. Shall 

 we in another fieneiat ion look l)ai-k at the 

 idea of a non-swavniing strain of l)ees and 

 smile indulticntlyV 'I'lial iiian\- bee-keepers 

 long ardently for sueh a lliinjj;, and believe 

 it i)ossible, is not evidence, lofjic, nor rea- 

 son. C"onse(|uently \ve are free to discuss 

 the matter fully and freely. 



What isswarniiuf;? It is something which 

 is to the Ijee what family-forming is to hu- 

 man kind? That the young stay and the 

 old go from the hive, and the young go and 

 the old stay in the human home is only a 

 different way of ol)laining the same result, 

 if, mind you, we may argue from man to bee 

 and bee to man. Swarming, then, is not a 

 habit with the bees any more than it is a 

 habit for the young coui)le, imi)elled by 

 love, to go, gladly and unafraid, into a new 

 world and to a new home. Unsex them and 

 they would not mate and leave the home. 

 No: swarming is not hal)it; it is law, a part 

 of the sexual plan of the bees. It may even 

 be that the almost sexless workers take this 

 way of mourning their lost tjueenhood. It 

 is law; and he who violates God's law per- 

 ishes. Do the bees commit svich a violation 

 when they fail to swarm? There are men 

 who do not marry, and there are bees which 

 do not swarm. I^et us suppose there were 

 no marrying (a condition said to exist only 

 in the other world) ; how long would the hu- 

 man race exist? Sui)pose all the honey- 

 bees in the world were to die save one swarm 

 (a not impossible idea), and that these, for 

 any of many reasons, failed to swarm, and 

 that in the dead of winter the queen died. 

 The unfortunate insects could not fulfill the 

 law, and they would i)erish utterly; and no 

 one may ever know how many types of an- 

 imals, birds, and re])tiles have become ut- 

 terly extinct from inability to comi)ly with 

 the law of pro])agation of kind. 



By breeding, selection, we influence the 

 shape, size, color, and even the disposition 

 of the lower animals, and to some extent 

 the characteristics of the insects; but in 

 working with the chickens, if we keep the 

 l)ullets shut away from the males the eggs 

 they lay will not be fertilized; and if this 

 were i)ersisted in the chicken family would 

 soon vanish. God cursed Onan. Lot's 

 daughter knew the evil of non-swarming. 

 In olden times a barren woman was despis- 

 ed, for perpetuation of kind was a law high- 

 ly esteemed before these days of swift and 

 easy divorces and race suicide. 



Thus it will be seen that, when we take 

 up the study of the exact meaning of words, 

 habit is not* the one to api)ly to the swarm- 

 ing of bees. Rather it is a "law peculiar to 

 them. Humans migrate, and that is the 

 only human act which bears any relation 

 to swarming. 



It is, I think, permissible to discuss this 

 matter. Were it ])ossible for us to get the 

 queen to mate in tlie hive, or to have two or 

 more queens in the hive until a new swarm 

 were ready to lly, we might have some hope 

 of creating a non-swarming strain; but we 

 can not; and to attempt to we must upset. 



not a habit of thousands of generations of 

 l)ees not to go contrary to instinct or inher- 

 ited traits, but law, and one of the funda- 

 mental rules of their l)eing. llo\ve\er, there 

 is nothing in the economy of the huuian to 

 compare with this law of the little i)eoi)le: 

 hence we can have no conce])tion of their 

 mental i)rocesses, if they have reasoning 

 faculties as sometimes seems. Having noth- 

 ing but sul)jective evidence it is a ((uestion 

 if man will ever be able to reduce this ten- 

 dency to swarm; for, consider keei)ing a 

 swarm of bees in a hive, room, or ca\ e. live, 

 ten, or even hfty years without swarming is 

 not evidence that we have destroyed the 

 tendency to do so. It merely means that 

 we or our environments have i)ut the bees 

 into a condition where it is not necessary for 

 them to swarm. They i)r()bal)ly had more 

 comb than they woulil ever fill, and simply 

 went on superseding as the age of the (pieen 

 required. Moreover, it is very likely that 

 in ca\e or house room there were more than 

 one "swarm," two or more queens. This is 

 reasonable from what we know. Even if 

 we did keep a lot of bees as above described 

 for scores of generations of bees, is it not a 

 fact that, if they were placed in normal sur- 

 roundings again, crowded for room with a 

 big honey-How on, t hey would at once swarm? 

 They certainly woukl, for tli< i/ (in wild by 

 naiiire. Man has never domesticated them. 

 In all the thousands of years he has been 

 handling them he has not made a start to 

 tame them or bend them to his wilt. Give 

 a swarm the nicest hive, with every thing 

 an honest bee might reasonably V^e expected 

 to ask, and when they come to swarm they 

 will leave the yard, seeking a dirty rotten 

 tree, even though there were a dozen emi)ty 

 hives in the yard they left. 



I have exi)ressed the oiiinion that a cer- 

 tain method of preventing swarming might 

 be use<l to overcome slowly the tendency of 

 bees to swarm. However, I now think, and 

 I believe time will prove the correctness of 

 my conclusions, that even with that carried 

 on for scores of generations of l)ees they will 

 swarm just as soon as they get from under 

 man's control, because they are wild by na- 

 ture. They were created so, or developed to 

 be. They are imi)elled by a law of which 

 they have no knowledge and which they 

 have no wish to violate. It is a part of their 

 sexual i)lan, just as home-making or family- 

 forming is i)art of the human jtlan, of which 

 the yoimg folks have no knowledge. They 

 only know the> are in love, but that is 

 (|uite suHicient. 



A man came to me once with an inven- 

 tion. He i)roposed to wind a roi)e on a 

 shaft. At the rope's end was a weight, 

 which, falling, unwound the roi)e and thus 

 gave ))ower to do work. He found in time 

 that the falling weight would lift less than 

 the man could lift in winding up the ro])e. 

 Many of my brother bee-men are trying to 

 develop a strain of non-swarming bees with 

 the i<lea that they are dealing with a hali- 

 it. .\re they? 



Buck ( irove, Iowa. 



