222 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE 



Prevention of Swarming 



By MATHILDE CANDLER, Cassville, Wis. 



^^\ X acquaintance of mine, a good old-fashioned retired farmer, 

 ^.^"V always calls to me whenever he sees me in the late spring' 

 or in summer: "Have you any young bees yet?" By 

 young bees he means swarms, and when I say "No," he shakes his 

 head and doesn't seem to know what to make of it. He seems to 

 think that swarming is necessary to the production of a honey 

 crop. 



That used to be a very general opinion. Then we gloried in 

 our swarms. Later, with extensive bee-keeping and out-apiaries, 

 swarming became a nuisance ; it was the bee-keeper's bugbear and 

 during the season required his constant watchfulness and attention. 

 So he tried every means he could think of to prevent it. 



In the production of extracted honey it ma}-' be almost wholly 

 prevented by frequent extracting and giving more empty combs. 

 But it is not so easy with the comb honey producer. \X\\\\ him 

 there is almost a certainty of swarming — often in spite of every- 

 thing he may do to prevent it. Clipping queens' wings prevents 

 swarms from absconding, but does not prevent swarming; and 

 often such a swarm lost or destroyed their queen and absconded 

 with the newly-hatched virgin queen. Xor does destroying queen 

 cells help, for they would only build new ones and then swarm. 



I have tried for years to prevent swarming with the view of 

 keeping down increase. At first I let them swarm once and pre- 

 vented after-swarming, and in the fall I united the colonies until I 

 had reduced them to the number 1 desired to keep. But as I 

 enlarged mv apiary and commenced an out-yard it became necessary 

 to prevent all swarming. 



Dividing of colonies by taking away part of the brood and 

 bees, filling up with frames of foundation, helped some as a pre- 

 vention. But unless the division was very carefully and intelligently 

 made, it lessened the honey crop and often swarming was not pre- 

 vented at all, but only retarded. That plan was not an entire 

 success with me, but I used it for several years as the best I 

 knew of. 



Then I tried shaking swarms. That was better when it was 

 better, but they very often absconded and at my next visit I would 



