TBE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



177 



to what the rest of the world may say or 

 think ; but wheu it comes to grammar we 

 shall have to submit to mankind in general 

 — to defy them we are not able. 



Adrian Getaz has a noteworthy article on 

 the causes of swarminy in A. B. J., 311. The 

 theory that overplus of larval food, and no- 

 where to put it, is the main cause evidently 

 needs some sort of modification, and he 

 works ably at the attempt to lick it into 

 shape. The nurse bees he thinks too young 

 to bear the brunt of the blame. 



" I cannot admit that the young hoes which 

 have hardly been out of the hive yet ehould be 

 tlie ones to insist upon emigration. Nor is it in 

 the nature of young beings (whether bees or hu- 

 man) to be dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction is rath- 

 er a production of old age." 



He gets it down to about this eventually : 

 (1) Lack of room makes it impossible to 

 have a sufficient number of little consumers 

 to eat the food. (2) The nurses build queen 

 cells with more or less design of storing the 

 food — and do store it when larval queens are 

 in the cells. (3) At the capping of the first 

 queen cell the queen suddenly becomes vio- 

 lently dissatisfied with the situation, and 

 strives to destroy the cell. The workers re- 

 sist ; and the disagreement grows contin- 

 ually worse and worse till swarming occurs. 

 This is pretty nearly right, I guess ; yet cer- 

 tain points seen to need fixing or supporting. 

 We would rather expect that if the queen 

 cups were built to store food in they would 

 be used for that purpose immediately, a 

 state of things we seldom or never find. 

 Also the queen's change from quiet tolera- 

 tion of the open cells to violent antipathy 

 toward the sealed ones needs explanation. 

 The reason is very plain I think, when we hit 

 upon it once. The queen in that matter goes 

 wholly by the sense of smell. Whatever 

 smells like a queen she attacks ; and the 

 young princesses take on the scent of fertil- 

 ity just at the period of their lives when they 

 are nearly ready to be sealed in. While it 

 may not be the only cause of the first swarms 

 issuing, I think we may lay it down as reli- 

 able that the queen's irrepressible conflict 

 with the sealed cells is by far the most im- 

 portant factor. If we can cancel this factor 

 we can " do the sum." ( >ther causes mostly 

 stand as more remote causes of this cause. 

 Yet as we can interpose at any point we 

 choose, proximate or remote, the efforts to 

 prevent swarming may be put forth along 

 several lines. We may, for instance, (A) 

 aTke away brood and give empty cells, and 



so seek to prevent the encouragement and 

 general blockade of things. (B) We may 

 seek to accomplish the latter by getting 

 most of the bees interested in something 

 else than brood rearing— as storing honey. 

 This is the reason colonies run for extract- 

 ing swarm but little ; every extracting draws 

 their attention to supplying the loss. (C) 

 Get the cells destroyed, either by the queen, 

 by the bees, by hand, or by some machine or 

 device of manipulation. (D) Get control of 

 the process by timely cagings and releasings 

 of the queen — using (C) also in connection, 

 if needful. Then, seemingly out of tally 

 with this theory, or partly so, there are (E) 

 the methods for making the bees comforta- 

 ble, of which the Aspinwall thin perforated 

 boards are a new and promising modifica- 

 tion. There are other lines more or less 

 hopeful: and I will propound (F) as possi- 

 bly the most practicable of all : abolish 

 spring, and the spring rush of brooding, by 

 perfectly conqering the winter problem, 

 and beginning the season with such strong 

 colonies that they won't realize but that it is 

 autumn — and have the brood chamber so 

 full of honey that they can't rear young 

 brood except in steady moderation. This 

 seems to be the secret of the non-swarming 

 of certain prosperous and totally neglected 

 colonies. There, my bees bother me so with 

 their swarming that I can't find time to tell 

 you any more about how perfectly easy it is 

 to prevent all swarming. 

 Richards, Lucas Co., Ohio, May 23, '95. 



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