June 25, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



407 





Contributed Articles 



] 



Shaken or Forced Swarms 

 Answered. 



Questions 



BY ADRIAN GETAZ. 



I SHOOK a few swarms several years ago. The object I 

 had in view was not to make swarms but to prevent them. 

 The plan was to take all the brood out, put it on a new 

 stand, and return it to the parent hive in five or sis days. 



As to preventing swarming, it was a complete success. 

 None of the colonies thus treated offered to swarm. But 

 the plan is otherwise objectionable, viz.: 



1st. To carry it out on a large scale, it would be neces- 

 sary to have a number of extra hives, which would involve 

 a considerable cost. 



2d. During the five or six days that the brood was ab- 

 sent, the parent colonies did nothing, or very little in the 

 sections, but worked vigorously in the brood-chambers. 

 And when I went to return the brood, I found the brood- 

 chambers about half full of crooked combs, mostly drone, 

 hanging from the supers. Asa matter of fact, I expected 

 to find some comb built in the brood-chamber, but I thought 

 that with plenty of foundation in the supers, the bulk of 

 the work would surely be done there. The locality, or 

 rather the strength of the honey-flow, may have something 

 to do with the results. 



3d. The queens will go in the sections unless prevented 

 by a honey-board. A honey-board is a nuisance, anyway, 

 and also an expense. 



4th. Some pollen was carried in the sections. I don't 

 know how it could be prevented. The locality may have 

 some bearing on this point. 



MODERATE INCREASE. 



A plan that will prevent swarming and secure a moder- 

 ate increase consists in taking one comb of brood out of 

 each colon}' every few days and replacing it with a comb of 

 foundation. If the object is merely the prevention of 

 swarming, the operation should be repeated as often as 

 necessary, so as to furnish the queen enough room to lay. 

 That may be as often as every fifth day, or perhaps only 

 every tenth day, according to the size of the brood-chamber, 

 the prolificness of the queen, the honey-flow, and other con- 

 ditions. 



As long as the queen has enough empty comb to lay in, 

 there will be no swarming unless the queen is failing, or 

 unless the lack of shade and ventilation renders the situa- 

 tion intolerable. 



It will not do to put in an already built comb ; the bees 

 would often fill it with honey before the queen could lay in 

 it. The reverse takes place when the foundation is given. 

 But it is necessary even then to replace but one comb at a 

 time, otherwise a portion of them would be filled with 

 honey, as the queen could not lay in them fast enough to 

 occupy them before the cells would be long enough to hold 

 honey. I suppose that an already built comb shaved down 

 would do as well as foundation, but I have not tried it. 



Keeping in view the above experiments, I think I can 

 answer some of the questions asked in a recent number of 

 this paper. 



WHEN TO SHAKE THE BEES. 



Right here it must be remembered that a colony which 

 will not attempt to swarm will do better if left undisturbed. 

 The trouble is, we do not know in advance which will not 

 swarm and which will. The plan suggests itself to watch 

 the colonies and " shook " those that begin to prepare for 

 swarming. The trouble is, that in order to carry out this 

 plan, it would be necessary to inspect carefully each colony 

 every fourth or fifth day. That is entirely too much work. 



The only plans that remain are to treat all the colonies 

 just before the swarming season, or put queen-traps on all 

 (or clip the queen), and treat only those that actually swarm. 

 If the locality and other conditions were such that the 

 majority of the colonies were likely to swarm, I would ad- 

 vise the first plan, otherwise I would prefer the second. 



COMB FOUNDATION OR WHAT? 



What shall we put in the brood-chamber, foundation or 

 drawn combs? In view of the experiments stated above, I 



should say, emphatically, not drawn combs, by any means. 

 The bees would liU them with lioney at once. Starters will 

 not do. Too many drone-combs would be built. Full sheets 

 of foundation should be given. 



CONTK ACTION. 



This is a point on which I have no experience and can 

 only suggest. If other people's bees do like mine did, they 

 would work nearly altogether in the brood-chamber, rebuild 

 it, and nearly entirely neglect the supers. 



I would suggest to contract the brood-chamber to three 

 combs, so that the majority of bees would be compelled to 

 work in the supers. Then as soon as three combs are oc- 

 cupied, add one or two more ; and when these are occupied, 

 add again, and so on. It would not do to leave the brood- 

 chamber much contracted all the time, because the swarm- 

 ing fever might start again. 



SHALL WE LEAVE A COMB OF BROOD? 



No, unless it is sealed brood. After the bees have once 

 begun to build queen-cells, they will keep it up as long as 

 the circumstances are favorable, and there is unsealed 

 brood. There must be a forced interruption of some sort, 

 either to destroy the swarming fever, or rather the queen- 

 cell-building fever. 



SHALL WE " SHOOK " OR NOT? 



In my opinion, no; decidely, no. It is far better to 

 keep the forces together than to divide. In shaking swarms, 

 the swarm (on the new stand) cannot give any surplus. The 

 parent colony loses the bees that are on the new stand ; be- 

 sides that, it' has to rebuild its brood-nest. A double loss. 



But can it be done? Can we keep the forces together ? 



Certainly we can. Cage the queens or requeen. In my 

 locality, and with my system of management, only a small 

 portion of my colonies swarm. The most satisfactory pro- 

 cess with me is to let those colonies swarm that want to, re- 

 turn the swarms, destroy the old queens, and let them re- 

 queen out of their own cells. It is very easily done by hav- 

 ing queen-traps on all the colonies. 



A CONVENTION OF TWO. 



Last winter I had a visit from Mr. Daniel Wurth, one 

 of our best queen-breeders. It is hardly necessary to say 

 that queen-rearing in all its aspects and details was the 

 subject of our conversation. Mr. Wurth does not sell his 

 queens direct to the consumers ; he furnishes them through 

 the supply-dealers. He insisted on the necessity of control- 

 ling the drones, and having drones to be good stock. He 

 says it is not enough to Italianize the neighborhood and 

 take the chances. His method is to put one or more drone- 

 combs in several of his best colonies, keep them fed, and 

 therefore have an abundance of good drones in the apiary. 

 He says that if there are enough drones in the apiary, only 

 an insignificant number of queens will mate elsewhere. 



Among other questions, I asked him if he had darker 

 queens in the fall than in the summer? He said he had 

 some occasionally, not only late in the fall but also early in 

 the spring. He thinks that the darker color may be due to 

 the queen-cells being exposed to a too low temperature. 



Knox Co., Tenn. 



Rearing Queens— Methods Discussed. 



BY HEXKY ALLEY. 



WELL, now that the umbilical-cord humbug has died 

 a natural death, and expired just about as quickly as 

 most people supposed it would, we can now discuss 

 subjects of more importance to the readers of this paper. 



Mr. Doolittle lays a good deal of stress upon the fact 

 that certain things he refers to can be found in " Scientific 

 Oueen-rearing." Yes, they can. One thing he refers to is 

 the matter of rearing queens over and behind an excluder— 

 that is, a queen-excluder. That is in his book, no doubt ; but 

 it never got there till I published it in the columns of the 

 American Bee Journal. Many other things may be found 

 in •' Scientific Queen-Rearing," but they did not get there 

 until after they appeared in my first work on queen-rearing, 

 in a book entitled " The Bee-Keepers' Handy-Book." This 

 work, which had the largest sale of any book devoted to 

 queen-rearing, and contained 180 pages, is now out of print. 



A perusal of this work made it quite easy for several 

 parties to write books on the subject of rearing queens. 



The only difference, in the method of rearing queens, 

 between Mr. Doolittle and myself, is that he makes artifi- 



