CHAPTER VII 



Combless Packages. 



ONE of the most serious problems which faces the southern 

 beekeeper is swarm prevention, whether or not the bees are 

 kept in modern hives. While readers will say this is just as 

 true of the beekeeping problems elsewhere, it is especially true in 

 the South below Tennessee and east of the Mississippi River, since 

 in many such localities even the Heddon method of after-swarm 

 prevention is often a failure. So are most methods of swarm 

 prevention, for many beekeepers of this region. Because of the 

 long brood rearing season, when bees may begin to breed up some- 

 times four months before the main nectar flow, and be sustained 

 by a continual light flow of nectar, swarm prevention becomes a 

 problem indeed. In such localities bees frequently cast a swarm 

 and after all, store about as much honey as those which do not 

 happen to swarm. Imagine the northern beekeeper confronted 

 with such a problem as that. Probably this excessive swarming 

 is one of the reasons for the great number of colonies of bees in 

 the southern states, compared to any other region of similar 

 area in this country. Add to this the box hive and swarming 

 seems at first the bane of southern beekeeping. 



So far as is known to the author there is no method of swarm 

 prevention which is widely used in the South, that differs from 

 swarm prevention methods in the North. In the Carolinas, 

 Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma and north 

 Texas, swarm prevention methods used in the North are feasible 

 and in use by all commercial honey producers of the region 

 named. Adequate room seems to be a paramount requisite. 



In much of the area of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 

 Louisiana and south Texas, all swarm prevention methods too 

 often fail. The writer never met a beekeeper in this region who 

 did not face the swarm problem every year and who was not 

 often, in a good year, without remedy except to take bees away 

 from the colonies. Increase is a simple method in most parts of 



53 



