Aup. 7, 1902. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



501 



I Contributed Articles. 



Two Queens with a Swarm— IWysterles of Swarming. 



BV G. M. DOOLITTI.K. 



Question'.— " Does a colony of bees ever have two queens? I 

 hiveil a swarm of bees the other <iay that had two inieens, I am [irutty 

 sure. I have kept bees only a short lime, but I think I know what a 

 queen is. My bee-keeping neighbor tells me that there were two 

 swarms whicli I hiveil, anil says there is never more than one quei^n in 

 a colony. Which of us is right ; I'lease tell us through the columns 

 of the American bee .Journal, as we both take that paper." 



Answer.— Very likely both your neighbor and yourself 

 may be right in this case, but you have things a little 

 mixed. I thinlt such a thing was never known as a prime 

 swarm of bees coming from a colony in a normal condition, 

 having two queens with it. To be sure, we do sometimes 

 have two laying queens in a hive at the same time, although 

 such is a rare exception ; but so far as I am aware no col- 

 ony was ever known to swarm at such a time, and both of 

 these laying queens go with the swarm. With a prime 

 swarm, or what is often erroneously called a first swarm, 

 there always accompanies it a laying queen. All swarms 

 having a young or virgin queen can be properly classed as 

 after-swarms. When a prime swarm issues it generally 

 leaves maturing queen-cells in the old hive, from which, 

 when matured, a young queen leads out all after-swarms. 



The only exception to this is that hinted at above, 

 where, from some cause, the old queen dies near the swarm- 

 ing season, when several queen-cells will be formed on the 

 brood left, so that young or virgin queens may lead out 

 what appears to be a prime swarm. 



For convenience, all swarms except the one having the 

 old or laying queen are called "after-swarms" by bee- 

 keepers, and from this explanation the readers may know 

 what the term "after-swarms" means. As a rule, about 

 six to eight days after the prime swarm has issued the first 

 young queen emerges from her cell, and if after-swarming 

 is considered by the bees to be the best economy for the 

 colony, the other young queens are kept in their cells by a 

 little knot of bees clustering on them at all times after said 

 queens are heard to be gnawing at their cell-covers, so the 

 lid of the cell can not be removed to let the queen out, her 

 majesty being fed all the time through an aperture made 

 by the gnawing of the imprisoned inmate in the royal cell. 

 If further swarming is not considered "economy " by the 

 bees, then all the other queen-cells are torn down after the 

 young queens have been destroyed, so that the first which 

 emerged is the only queen in the hive. 



If the cells are protected as above, the first emerged 

 queen seems to get into a rage, and utters shrill notes at 

 intervals, sounding something like tee — tee — tee-tee, te, t, t, 

 t, would sound uttered in this way, and called the " piping 

 of the queen," which is kept up for about two days, when the 

 second swarm, or the first of the after-swarms issues. This 

 piping of the queen is always heard if listened for before 

 all after-swarms, or any case of a plurality of queens in a 

 colony intending to send out a swarm. The queens kept 

 back in their cells by the bees are growing in age and 

 strength, the same as is the one having her liberty, they 

 telling this by their trying to pipe the same as the one does 

 that is out of her cell, which noise is termed " quahking ;" 

 and so it happens that, during the hurry and bustle of sec- 

 ond swarming, one or two of these queens hastily finishes 

 biting the cover off the cell and gets out with the swarm, in 

 which case two or more queens are found with the swarm, 

 as was the case with our querist, although it is a rare thing 

 to see more than two or three queens with a second swarm, 

 unless said swarm has been long delayed on account of bad 

 weather. 



If a third swarm is to issue, the bees now cluster about 

 the remaining royal cells having queens in them, the same 

 as before, keeping all queens prisoners except one, which 

 liberated qeeen scolds and pipes away, as did the one be- 

 fore, the others in the cells showing their anger back again 

 by a chorous of quahking immediately after the first ceases 

 piping, when, after the lapse of two days, or such a matter, 

 the third swarm issues. 



As there are less bees in number at this issue than there 

 were when the second swarm issued, and more mature 

 queens held as prisoners, the queen-cells are quite generally 



vacated by the guard-bees ; and queens, bees, and all ru.sh 

 out, and in such cases I have often counted as many as 

 from H to l.S queens with one .such swarm, though from one 

 to five is the usual number. 



Occasionally a colony will send out a fourth, and some- 

 times a fifth swarm, though the latter is of very rare occur- 

 rence; and sometimes all of the young queens will leave 

 their cells and go out with the last swarm, in which case 

 the parent colony is hopelessly queenless, and dies from 

 their inability to procure a queen, when, as soon as the bees 

 are gone, the larvif of the w"ax-moth take possession of 

 and destroy the combs, and the owner declares that the 

 worms was what destroyed his bees. 



In the above I have tried to give a short insight into the 

 mysteries of the swarming of bees, many points of which 

 do not seem to be fully understood, even by those who have 

 kept bees for several years. Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



Importance of Good Stores for Bees In Winter. 



BV C. P. DAD.^NT. 



I believe it is necessary that we should report failures 

 as well as successes, in order to enable the producers to 

 judge of the possibilities of the business and take advan- 

 tage of the experience of others, whether for good or for 

 bad. 



Last year was probably the driest season that we have 

 ever seen, and the apiary conditions were anything but 

 favorable. But in spite of the drouth the bees stored some 

 honey. Those that were located on the lowlands near the 

 Mississippi River gathered quite a crop from the fall blos- 

 soms that grow there in abundance. Those on the hills 

 had, in this locality, a heavy flow of honey-dew, the honey- 

 dew of plant-lice, a very unusual occurrence in the month 

 of September, for I do not remember having ever seen 

 honey-dew later than the month of July. 



When our apiarist reported to me that the hives were 

 getting fairly good stores from honey-dew, I had some mis- 

 givings as to the probable success of wintering on such 

 food, but as he reported also that they already had some 

 honey from other sources, though in small amount — and as 

 I had noticed the bees at work in the fall bloom, which was 

 rather scanty, it is true — I concluded we would best risk 

 wintering on that food rather than going to the very con- 

 siderable trouble of extracting all the honey and feeding. 

 But I felt uneasy, and wrote to a friend who asked me about 

 the condition of the bees, that I was afraid there might be 

 considerable loss, owing to the bad supply of winter food. 

 He reminded me of this after he was informed of the result. 



Well, the beginning of winter was very favorable. The 

 bees had a flight every few days, and everything looked 

 prosperous. But after Jan. IS, we had about five weeks of 

 confining weather, during which the bees could not fly, and 

 when a warm day came it was plain that the bad food was. 

 doing the havoc anticipated, and worse, too. Nearly every 

 colony suffered from diarrhea, and a few colonies were found 

 dead. Then dwindling began, and slowly and steadily we 

 lost one colony after another till one-third of the apiary had 

 gone, here at the home place. 



Two other apiaries were equally decimated, both having' 

 been within reach of the unhealthy supply, while the bees 

 that had harvested a crop of fall honey wintered as well as 

 any. Never had we seen such poor food in the hives, and 

 never had we lost so many bees during the winter. It was 

 practically a disaster, and until May the bees kept falling 

 away. But at the opening of the fruit-bloom they began 

 picking up, and now the hives are full (June 27), artificial 

 divisions have refilled the greater number of empty hives, 

 and our apiary is itself again, though still we have a few 

 hives full of combs waiting for a little better weather. For 

 the season is not at all favorable, the white clover bloom is 

 missing almost entirely, though there is plenty of it coming 

 up, but this will not bloom so as to give us any crop this 

 year. The wet weather is filling the corn-fields with knot- 

 weeds and Spanish-needles, and we look for a fair fall crop. 



This loss, it seems to me. carries a good lesson. We 

 knew, by former experience, that winter food was of great 

 importance, but this evidences the fact that it is probably 

 the most important item in successful wintering. Not only 

 can not the bees be wintered safely out-of-doors with such 

 food as honey-dew, when the confinement is to extend be- 

 yond a few days, but even cellar confinement is dangerous. 



We had put 20 of our weakest colonies, in an out-apiary, 

 in the cellar, and out of these only four came out alive. 

 With good, healthy food it is not probable that we should 



