628 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



press at will aud without detriment to 

 the colony the desire on the part of the 

 bees to swarra are numerous. Chief 

 among these may be mentioned : There 

 need not then be the great interruption 

 to honey-storing which the issuance of 

 swarms brings in the height of the 

 honey yield. The apiarist could have 

 all his return in the shape of honey in- 

 stead of partly in the form of swarms, 

 clearly an advantage when the number 

 of his colonies had reached the limit of 

 his field, or as many as he could well 

 care for, and remunerative prices could 

 not be obtained for the surplus stock. 

 The time and labor expended in watch- 

 ing for and hiving swarms would be 

 saved. Losses through the absconding 

 of swarms would be avoided. Even with 

 all reasonable care such losses often 

 occur. 



Centuries ago the Greeks recognizing 

 some of the advantages which the con- 

 trol of swarming would give to the bee- 

 keeper, practiced with their basket- 

 liives furnished with bars across the 

 tops, the transfer of combs with adher- 

 ing bees to new hives, thus forming arti- 

 ficial swarms. This is interesting to 

 note as being the first recorded attempt 

 to control swarming. Contardi, who 

 wrote in 1768, describes these hives, 

 and says : " When the bees should 

 swarm, those people do nothing but to 

 take out some of these bars to which the 

 bees attach their combs, and they place 

 them upon another basket or hive. It 

 is in this manner that the Greeks multi- 

 ply their hives." The abbot, Delia Rocca, 

 of Syria, in the Grecian archipelago, in 

 his Traite complet sur les Abeilles, pub- 

 lished at Paris in 1790, mentions this 

 as " a method of the ancient Greeks for 

 the multiplication of swarms, which is 

 employed to-day by the inhabitants of 

 the Island of Candla." And Liger, the 

 author of La Maison rustiqiie, in the 

 eighth edition published in 1742, gives 

 a figure of one of these basket hives. 



Most of the systems of preventing or 

 limiting natural swarming have de- 

 pended upon the formation of a limited 

 number of artificial swarms, frequent 

 destruction of queen-cells by the bee- 

 keeper, close use of the honey-extractor, 

 the combining of atter-swarms, chang- 

 ing places for hives, replacing of all 

 queens annually, supplying empty space 

 for comb-building below the brood-nest 

 or between the brood-nest and flight- 

 hole, or there has been some combina- 

 tion of these methods. 



From time to time queens have been 

 advertised as bred from "non-swarming 

 strains of bees." While it is very rea- 



sonable to suppose that the inclination 

 to swarm might be decreased consider- 

 ably by long-continued, careful selec- 

 tion, such as would be given had we bet- 

 ter control over mating, it is safe to say 

 that comparatively slight permanent 

 results have thus far been attained in 

 this direction. And since swarms would 

 issue, various devices have been con- 

 structed to warn the owner, or to pre- 

 vent loss during his absence. Electric 

 attachments and telephone lines have 

 been put up, adjusted entrances to con- 

 fine queens, traps to catch the latter, 

 and decoy-hives have been used, and at 

 last the automatic or self-hiver has been 

 evolved after many experiments and 

 much thought on the part of apiarian 

 inventors. Although the self-hiver in 

 its more perfected form has scarcely 

 been subjected to a thorough test, it 

 promises to do all that has been ex- 

 pected of it. But it will not 



TAKE AWAY THE DESIRE TO SWARM. 



This is exactly what Mr. H. P. Lang- 

 don, of East Constable, N. Y., says he 

 can do by the use of the non-swarming 

 attachment invented by him, and now 

 for the first time made public. More- 

 over, he keeps all of the field force of 

 his colonies storing surplus honey under 

 the most favorable conditions as long as 

 there is any honey to be obtained in 

 field or forest, and simplifies to such an 

 extent the work of the apiary during 

 this portion of the year that he can at- 

 tend to several times as many colonies 

 as under the old way. 



The immediate condition which incites 

 a colony of bees to swarm has been quite 

 well recognized as its general prosperity 

 — its populousness, the abundance of 

 honey secretion, and crowded condition 

 of the brood-combs, or, in general, such 

 circumstances as favor the production 

 of surplus honey, especially surplus 

 comb honey, and it has of course been 

 taken for granted that honey could not 

 be secured if these conditions were 

 changed. Nor would it, without any 

 knowledge of the systeii proposed by 

 Mr. Langdon, be easy for experienced 

 bee-keepers to believe that all it pro- 

 poses to do could be accomplished with- 

 out much manipulation, and perhaps 

 also the use of some complicated device. 



I was, however, agreeably surprised 

 at the whole simplicity of Mr. Langdon's 

 plan, when, in December last, he made 

 it known to me, and sent a non-swarmer 

 for purposes of illustration ; and in an- 

 swer to his request as to what I thought 

 of it, I wrote him at once that I was of 

 the opinion that he had made one of the 



