524 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL-. 



CONDUCTED BY 



Hit®. JeMEif^ MteMey, 



Greenville, Texas. 



Having' Divided Colonies as Good as 

 Natural Swarms. 



This question was asked in Query 849. 

 As none of those replying had space to 

 tell the "hows" and "wherefores" per- 

 taining '0 the question, each one gave a 

 brief answer that was applicable to his 

 own locality ; so all the answers we may 

 say, are correct. 



The reason that a divided colony is 

 just as good as any in the South, is this : 

 Our main honey harvest never comes 

 earlier than May, and in some portions 

 of the South it does not come until July ; 

 so we may divide our bees in March or 

 April, and long before the honey harvest 

 comes, we can have the divisions or 

 divided colonies just as strong as any 

 natural swarm, or as strong as one that 

 did not swarm at all. So they are bound 

 to be just as good for storing honey, or 

 for any other purpose, as the natural 

 swiirms, and for me I will take them 

 first, as the portion that forms one of 

 the divided colonoies has a young, vigor- 

 ous queen (or ought to have, if the api- 

 arist knows his business) that will have 

 her colony boiling over in bees at the 

 right time ; when, if they had swarmed 

 naturally, the swarm is most likely to 

 have an old queen that will persist in 

 swarming again just at the time they 

 should begin to work in the boxes, thus 

 almost rendering them useless for stor- 

 ing comb honey that season. 



Or if they do not swarm, the queen in 

 many instances is beginning to give way, 

 and as natural ^rst swarms usually build 

 nearly one-third drone-comb, the conse- 

 quence is at the time they should begin 

 in the supers their population is about 

 one-third drones, which is a great loss 

 to the owner. Nearly twice as many 

 bees could have been reared on the same 

 food, and the hive chock-full of bees in- 

 stead of drones. Or the queens of nat- 

 ural swarms may be so nearly " played 



out "at the time of swarming that her 

 colony may be so reduced at the begin- 

 ning of the honey-flow that they will be 

 useless for storing section honey. While 

 some natural swarms, I must admit, are 

 as good for section honey in the South 

 as others, I speak of the majority. 



The parent colony, where a natural 

 swarm has been cast, is better for sec- 

 tion hoiley in the South than the swarm, 

 for the above reasons. 



Now, to make it a little plainer, I will 

 say that if you make your divisions at 

 the right time, you will have all natural 

 colonies long before the honey-flow ; just 

 for the simple reason that time enough 

 makes them so. 



For instance, we divide in April; by 

 June the artificial part will have passed 

 away by an entirely new generation of 

 of bees, and they have all the natural 

 qualities of a natural swarm, and are in 

 fact, or reality, a natural colony. So 

 why are they not just as good for any 

 purpose as to let them swarm? I say 

 they are, and better. 



Early natural swarms in the South 

 are of no value except to perpetuate the 

 colony until harvest time, and many 

 times fall behind the rightly made arti- 

 ficial swarms and the after-swarms just 

 for the reasons given above. While in 

 the North their bees seldom swarm until 

 the beginning of the harvest, so the 

 Northern apiarist can put his rousing 

 natural swarm right to work in the 

 boxes, and, of course, get the use of 

 them at once. And, of course, divided 

 colonies have not had time to recuperate, 

 and are not profitable ; nor can they 

 work like the natural swarm. That is 

 why the answers to the above question 

 were different, and at the same time all 

 correct. 



I have taken 4 frames of bees, brood 

 and honey from as many strong colonies 

 in the last of March ; put them together, 

 carried them to an out-apiary, given 

 them a good queen, and have had such 

 a colony outstrip anything in the apiary 

 that same year ; and the full colonies, 

 where the frames were taken from, 

 never perceptibly felt the loss. 



More than this, I used to run my bees 

 for box honey, and have received orders 

 for full colonies right at the beginning 

 of the honey-flow ; and on going out to 

 the apiary to select a good colony to 

 send to my customer, I have found all 

 such beginning to work freely in the 

 sections, I just turned about and pro- 

 cured a new empty hive, and on going 

 to 8 strong colonies, took a frame of 

 bees, brood and honey, placed them In 

 my new hive, closed the entrance (this 



