American Bee Journal. 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. IV. 



JULY, 1868. 



No. 1. 



[From the German of F. W. Vogel.] 



Practical Bee-Culture. 



AFTERSWARMS. 



Second or afterswarms may be expected when 

 teeting, commonly called piping, and quawking 

 are heard in a hive from which a prime swarm 

 has issued. The latter of these sounds proceeds 

 from mature young queens kept confined with- 

 in their cslls either by constraint of the workers 

 or from fear of the queen already at large in the 

 hive. The teeting proceeds from this young 

 queen already emerged after tlie departure of 

 the first or prime swarm, and is uttered in reply 

 to the querulous cry of one still kept in durance 

 by force or fear. Not unfrequently such calls 

 and responses continue to be heard in a hive 

 during several successive days, even when the 

 weather seems to be highly propitious for emi- 

 gration, and still no swarm departs. 



While an afterswarm is issuing, the young 

 queen occasionally makes her appearance 

 among the earliest emigrants, though she usu- 

 ally does not come forth till a considerable por- 

 tion of the swarming party is already on the 

 wing. She rarely delays her departure, how- 

 ever, till half the bees are out, nor till towards 

 the close of the exodus. In most cases she 

 shows herself repeatedly on the alighting board, 

 but again retreats into the hive, finally re-ap- 

 pearing and taking wing, to accompany the 

 swarm. Yet, it sometimes also happens that, 

 whether from sheer wilfulness, or from some 

 other cause, she ultimately remains in the hive, 

 after having thus shown herself, and the swarm 

 fails to issue. The bees then already out are 

 apt to settle in small clusters in two or three 

 different places — speedily, however, becoming 

 aware of their queenless condition, and gradu- 

 ally returning to the parent hive. 



Though an aftei swarm issues to-day, if the 

 swarming impulse continues to prevail, the 

 parent stock will not send forth another to-mor- 

 row, though it may probably do so on the third 

 day, for the young queen will usually remain 

 at least one day at large in the hive after leaving 

 the royal cell. Second, third, and subsequent 

 swarms, not unusually contain two, three, and 



at times a still larger number of young queens, 

 each — a circumstance easy to be accounted for. 

 When a second or subsequent swarm is sent out, 

 the young queens still in their cells are usually 

 quite mature and full fledged; and several of them 

 avail themselves of the opportunity to emerge 

 during the bustle, and accompany the depart- 

 ing swarm. An afterswarm that has several 

 queens will generally cluster in the usual man- 

 ner in one place ; but occasionally it will subdi- 

 vide and settle in two or more liliputian clusters. 

 In a short time, however, the bees of the smal- 

 ler of these clusters will leave and join the lar- 

 ger uue, wbieii contains the first-Hatched queen, 

 that had emerged and mingled with the workers 

 for some time before the departure of the 

 swarm, and accompanied the first-issuing party. 



When the swarming impulse has subsided, 

 the bees allow the emerged queen remaining 

 with them to destroy all the queen cells yet ex> 

 isting in the hive, or will extirpate the royal 

 brood themselves, by dragging the nymphs 

 from their cells, and casting'them out. Usually 

 this work of destruction is begun on the day 

 when the second swarm has issued ; but if a 

 dead queen be found in front of a hive in which 

 teeting and qicawkingis still heard, it may not be 

 regarded as certain evidence that the colony has 

 abandoned all inclination to swarm ; for the 

 queen thus found may be one that issued unob- 

 served from her cell and was afterwards encoun- 

 tered and killed by her accepted rival. Usual- 

 ly, however, the workers destroy the supernu- 

 merary queens reared in a hive in preparation 

 for swarming. 



All bee-keepers residing in poor honey dis- 

 tricts concur in the opinion that after-swarms, 

 especially in unfavorable seasons, are ruinous 

 to bee-culture ; and that even in ordinary sea- 

 sons, they deprive us of all chance of obtaining 

 any surplus honey. The parent stocks com- 

 monly devote some eight or ten days to this 

 matter of sending out after-swarms,during which 

 period many precious hours are w T asted, and 

 honey gathering largely neglected, inasmuch as 

 the swarming impulse does, for the time, to a 

 large degree control or suppress the passion for 

 gathering honey and accumulating stores. In- 

 stead of roaming the fields and exploring the 



