188& 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



.',SI 



hints. My opinion is, that people follow in 

 certain ruts a good deal by the force of hab- 

 it. It is so in selling honey. A certain 

 style of package gets into the market, and 

 people take a notion that they can not have 

 it in any other shape ; and sometimes it 

 takes a good while to make a change. Bass- 

 wood honey is certainly whiter than clover 

 honey. I do not know that 1 ever heard 

 anybody call clover honey handsomer, so far 

 as looks are concerned, than basswood. 



SWARMING. 



THE THEORY OF ITS CAUSE, AND HOW IT MAY BE 

 PREVENTED. 



HAT causes the swarming spirit of a colony? 

 is a question not fully answered as yet. I 

 will hereby give ray theory, and I think it 

 is as new as it is correct. 

 We know, that, 31 days after the egg is 

 laid by the queen, the young worker-bee will gnaw 

 out of the cell. Two days later it commences to 

 work, but inside of the hive only. About 16 days 

 later she commences to gather pollen and honey. 

 In summer time the worker bee will generally be 

 dead 27 days after the first flight; so we see that 

 the proportion of brood, house-bees, and field-bees, 

 is 23 to 16 to 27, in the normal state of a colony. Of 

 course, this is correct only if the queen has laid the 

 same number of eggs daily for some time. In early 

 spring, when breeding commences, no house-bees 

 are in the hive, and the older bees have to do their 

 work. The amount of brood is by and by increased, 

 and the proportion of brood to house -bees gets 

 gradually nearer to the normal condition. As soon 

 as the queen has laid, for more than 23 days, as 

 many eggs as she possibly can, we have the normal 

 condition, and the colony is on its highest point of 

 prosperity. The growing number of honey-gather- 

 ers has meantime filled the empty cells of the hive 

 partially with honey, and consequently the number 

 of eggs daily laid by the queen is by and by decreas- 

 ing. 



It makes no difference whether the greatest num- 

 ber of eggs laid by the queen is attributable to her 

 fertility, or to the room in the hive devoted to 

 breeding, or whether the number of eggs laid is, 

 later on, decreasing from any other cause; weal- 

 ways have the fact that hereby a surplus of house- 

 bees is in the hive at a certain time, because more 

 young bees will come from the cells as the queen 

 lays eggs. These young bees are desirous of feed- 

 ing larvae, but not all of them can possibly do so; 

 and this condition of a colony starts the swarming 

 impulse. The desire of young bees for more brood 

 causes it. As much as possible, prepared food is 

 given to the queen, and so she is induced to lay 

 eggs in the started queen-cells, and a swarm is the 

 consequence. 



This theory explains every case of swarming com- 

 ing to my notice, and the different ways by which 

 swarming can be prevented to a certain degree. 

 We know of 



DIFFERENT WAYS TO PREVENT SWARMING. 



1. If we remove some capped brood at the right 

 time, and put empty combs, or, still better, founda- 

 tion, into the brood-nest, we induce the queen to 

 lay more eggs; consequently the house-bees have 

 more work to do, and the surplus of house-bees dis- 



appears. The next day fewer young bees will gnaw 

 out of the cells, and the house-bees get less again, 

 relatively to the brood. So this is a very good pre- 

 ventive of the swarming fever til) the former 

 condition of things reappears. 



3. If we take some bees from a colony we get 

 mostly house bees, because the field-bees go back 

 to the colony. So this will prevent swarming for 

 some days. 



3. If we give to the house-bees more work to do, 

 we can prevent swarming; so by cooling the inside 

 of the hive. Then more bees are necessary to clus- 

 ter on the brood, and swarming may be prevented 

 for some time. 



4. But the house-bees are the comb-builders too. 

 If we give them occasion to build new combs near 

 the brood-nest, swarming may be prevented in 

 most cases, especially if the bees build combs for 

 the purpose, that the queen may lay some eggs in 

 them (Simrains method). These combs are clear 

 profit to the bee-keeper. Why, I will show present- 

 ly. 



5. If we work our colony for extracted honey, and 

 extract the honey from the combs in such a way 

 that the queen always has plenty of empty cells, we 

 shall have no surplus of house-bees, and swarming 

 can be prevented. But we have to consider here, 

 that a very strong colony needs relatively fewer 

 brood-bees than a weaker one, so a strong colony 

 may have a surplus of house-bees, if the proportion 

 of brood to house bees is even not smaller than 23 

 to 16. So a very strong colony may swarm never- 

 theless, while a weaker one will not. 



6. A moderate honey-flow which by and by 

 crowds the brood, is just the thing to cause a sur- 

 plus of house-bees, and so induces swarming. A 

 very good honey-tiow crowds, of course, the brood 

 also; but the young bees will find plenty of work to 

 do to prolong the cells, to cap the honey, and to 

 evaporate the rapidly coming honey. Such a very 

 good honey-flow gives plenty of work for young 

 and old bees, and they pay very little attention to 

 the brood. 



1 said that a surplus of house-bees will build 

 combs at no cost to the bee-keeper. My theory is 

 as follows: All the young bees feed themselves 

 plentifully with pollen and honey, for the purpose 

 of feeding the young larvse. If a surplus of brood- 

 bees is in the hive, some of them will not find larvse 

 to be fed; the larval food, or chyle, accumulates in 

 the stomach, and will go through the stomach-wall 

 into the blood. A surplus of blood is just the con- 

 dition by which wax is secreted; consequently a 

 surplus of house-bees causes wax secretion. If 

 room and the necessary temperature are in the 

 hive, new combs will be built; if the bees have no 

 room for this purpose they build brace-combs, or 

 thick wax lumps, on the top-bars of the frames, or 

 they cap the honey twice as thick as usual. A new- 

 ly hived swarm has no brood, consequently always 

 a surplus of house-bees— at least the first eight 

 days. In this time a swarm builds combs very rap- 

 idly, and at no cost to the bee-keeper, because this 

 wax is secreted anyhow. We can observe this if we 

 hive a small swarm (especially an after-swarm) in a 

 large hive, and the outside temperature is cool at 

 night time, so that the cluster of the swarm is much 

 contracted. We then find a great number of wax- 

 shreds on the bottom of the hive. This wax is se- 

 creted, but the bees can't use it, because the clus- 

 ter is too small, and outside the temperature is too 



