448 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



November 



EDITOR OF BRITISH BEE JOUR- 

 NAL 



Among the British bee magazines, 

 the British Bee Journal is best l<nown 

 in this country. It is a weekly pub- 

 lication now in its 49th volume. It 

 has a companion publication in the 

 Beekeeper's Record, which is a 

 monthly in its 39th volume. Both 

 publications are edited by Thos. W. 

 Cowan and J. Herrod-Hempsall. Mr. 

 Herrod-Hempsall is at present the ac- 

 tive editor of both publications, and 

 we are showing his photo on this page 

 in order to give our readers an op- 

 portunity to get better acquainted 

 with our fellow craftsman across the 

 water. 



SWARMING 

 A Study in Bee Behavior 



By Sol. L. Skoss 



The study of the behavior of bees 

 under the swarming impulse is both 

 interesting and important to every 

 progressive beekeeper. Its impor- 

 tance is best illustrated by the late 

 Dr. C. C. Miller's "statement (Fifty 

 Years among the Bees P. 151), "If I 

 were to meet a man perfect in the en- 

 tire science and art of beekeeping, 

 and were allowed from him an answer 

 to just one question, I would ask for 

 the best and easiest way to prevent 

 swarming, for one who is anxious to 

 secure the largest crop of comb 

 honey." 



Swarming has been carefully stud- 

 died by various investigators, as well 

 as by many practical beekeepers, for 

 several years. Different theories have 

 been advanced as to its fundamental 

 causes, yet this question is far from 

 being settled. Lack of sufficient ven- 

 tilation during hot weather, the queen 

 being crowded for space, peculiar 

 conditions of certain localities and 

 seasons are, after all, only contribu- 

 tory causes, which, important as they 

 are in augmenting and promoting the 

 swarming fever, could hardly be con- 

 sidered more than conditions favor- 

 ing the tendency of swarming. 



TheRussian beekeepers hold as a 

 general cause of swarming, the natu- 

 ral tendency of bees, as of many other 

 insects of their class, to form new col- 

 onies in that way. Just as the old 

 worn out bees are being constantly 

 supplanted under favorable condi- 

 tions by young bees emerging from 

 the cells, so are the old families head- 

 ed by old queens being supplanted by 

 new families and young queens tak- 

 ing the place of their mothers. It is 

 just the natural law of reproduction 

 and of propagation of the species ap- 

 plied to whole colonies, a kind of com- 

 munity reproduction in the same 

 sense as individual reproduction. To 

 quote Frank C. Pellett (Productive 

 Beekeeping, P. 100), "It should be 

 remembered that with bees and other 

 social insects the community is the 

 unit, rather than the individual. The 

 workers are incapable of reproduc- 

 tion, and accordingly no matter how 

 great an increase there may be in 

 their number in the hive, it is but 



temporary, and makes no permanent 

 difference in perpetuation of the spe- 

 cies. Swarming is then the expres- 

 sion of the instinct of procreation or 

 increase." 



Of coui'se, one can frequently ob- 

 serve in the same apiary a large per- 

 centage of colonies that pass through 

 the entire season without making any 

 attempt to swarm at all. But then 

 the procreative instinct is not devel- 

 oped with all communities, as with all 

 individuals, alike. Besides, there are 

 many special causes which diminish 

 and control the swarming tendency 

 among the bees, as old crippled bees, 

 weak colonies, young queens, etc. 



According to the opinion of the 

 German investigator, Gerstung (quot- 

 ed by Dr. Phillips, Beekeeping, 1915, 

 page 79), swarming is caused by un- 

 due proportion of nurse bees to the 

 young brood they have to feed with 



J. Herrod Hempsall 



larval food, or royal jelly. The hive 

 is full of capped brood before swarm- 

 ing, but very little of young larvse or 

 eggs are found there at that time. The 

 presence of an excessive quantity of 

 larval food induces the bees to build 

 queen cells and rear queens by the 

 surplus food. W. Z. Hutchinson (Ad- 

 vanced Bee Culture, 5th edition, page 

 64) and E. R. Root (A. B. C. and X. 

 Y. Z. of Bee Culture, 1920, article 

 "Swarming") are inclined to accept 

 this theory as the prime cause of 

 swarming. 



While this preponderance of nurse 

 bees in the brood chamber is a gen- 

 eral condition in all colonies shortly 

 before swarming, it could hardly be 

 considered more than one of its chief 

 notable symptoms, on the same order 

 as the invariable procedure of a 

 swarming colony to construct drone 

 comb, depositing drone eggs, and 

 building queen cells. All these symp- 

 toms will be manifested in various re- 

 gions and in different seasons in ac- 

 cordance with the special conditions 



of the honey flow, favoring the rapid 

 increase of the population of the hive, 

 which in its turn tends to develop the 

 procreative instinct of the community 

 as a whole. The fact that a colony 

 could be induced to give up swarming 

 by taking away all young brood and 

 substituting for same empty combs 

 would indicate that excess of larval 

 food is not the prime cause of swarm- 

 ing, since in this case the food would 

 immediately be increased instead of 

 being diminished (Demuth quoted in 

 above-mentioned article on "Swarm- 

 ing"). 



So far the question of the funda- 

 mental cause of swarming is far from 

 being definitely solved. Unfortunate- 

 ly, too little attention has been paid 

 by serious investigators to this im- 

 portant phase of bee behavior. While 

 the practical beekeeper sought to de- 

 vise various methods for controlling 

 swarming by removing for the time 

 being the contributory causes which 

 tend to develop the swarming fever, 

 he did very little to find out the prime 

 cause of this phenomenon. 



Numerous methods have been em- 

 ployed for the prevention of swarm- 

 ing. Root, in his article on swarming 

 (A. B. C. and X. Y. Z. of Bee Culture, 

 1920) sums them up into 12 different 

 methods, whereas some Russian text 

 books quote as many as twenty meth- 

 ods for swarm control. However, to 

 all of them would apply Demuth's con- 

 clusion, that "any manipulation for 

 swarm control, whether applied after 

 the colony has acquired the swarming 

 fever or applied to all colonies alike 

 previous to the swarming season, is 

 based upon the single principle — a 

 temporary disturbance in the continu- 

 ity of the daily emergence of brood. 

 This disturbance should occur just 

 previous to or during the swarming 

 season (Demuth, Comb Honey, 1917, 

 Farmers' Bulletin 505, p. 34). 



Swarming season varies greatly, ac- 

 cording to climatic conditions of dif- 

 ferent regions, but May and June 

 could generally be considered as 

 swarming months, while in the South 

 swarming begins somewhat earlier. 



The procedure of swarming itself 

 is so beautifully depicted by Lang- 

 stroth, Cheshire, Maeterlink and oth- 

 ers, that I shall give here only a brief 

 description, with due regard to the 

 behavior of bees during the process 

 of swarming. 



When the flow of nectar is coming 

 in pretty regularly, brood rearing be- 

 ing thereby greatly stimulated, our 

 bee community becomes very popu- 

 lous. The provident bees start to 

 build drone comb and the queen de- 

 posits drone eggs therein. 



Queen cells are started before the 

 maturing of the drones in their cells. 

 The number of queen cells are rarely 

 less than three or more than thirty, 

 although a beekeeper from Palestine 

 told me that fifty to a hundred queen 

 cells built under the swarming im- 

 pulse is a frequent occurrence with 

 their native bees. When the cells 

 have already been capped, we may 

 expect swarming any fair warm day. 



The following table made by the 

 Russian beekeeper, Butkewitch (But- 



