354 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1. 



REyuEENiNG. Alley says, in April ApL, " It 

 will pay to reqiieen colonies each two years."' 

 Rambler says, in same ApL. "When a honey- 

 producer advocates the requeening of all his 

 colonies the second year, it seems to be an evi- 

 dence of the inferiority of his system of queen- 

 rearing and of his queens." That's rough on 

 Alley, but he has lots of good company on his 

 side, and I guess he can stand it. 



6ENE^)qi£ Ot)RREgP0NDENCE. 



THE CAUSES OF SWARMING. 



DADANT TELLS US WHY HE PREFERS 

 HIVES. 



About 40 years ago a friend of mine told me 

 that he had seen a swarm s(4tling on a rock in 

 a waste land, about half a mile outside of the 

 city in which I lived in France. It was at the 

 beginning of April, and had I not known my 

 friend as unlikely to tell lies I would have 

 thought that he intended to make an April fool 

 ■of me. After finding the swarm I covered it 

 Avith a hive, and the next morning I brought it 

 home. My business prevented me from looking 

 at it before evening, when, to my surprise. I 

 saw that most of the bees were gone, and that 

 the few hundred Mhich had not followed the 

 •others were unable tofly. They were starving. 

 Then I concluded that this colony had deserted 

 its hive for want of food; and this view was 

 contirmed by several other similar experiences. 

 On a Sunday afternoon, while glancing about 

 my home apiary, I saw the alighting-board of 

 one of the hives covered with fighting bees. 

 The ground in front of the hive was already 

 covered with dead ones. 1 stooped down, and 

 racked my brain to find an explanation of the 

 fact, for I had never seen anything like that, 

 when, on a sudden, a lump of bees lai'ger than 

 my fist dropped on my liat, and thence slipped, 

 ' upon the fighting bees. Raising my eyes 1 saw 

 a swarm suspended under the limb of a tree 

 just above. These bees \\ere so weak that 

 they were unable to cling together, and were 

 killed by the bees of the hive in front of which 

 they had fallen, little by little, in small bundles. 

 I procured a hive into which I shook the 

 swarm. They took the food that I gave them, 

 and. after having regained strength, they de- 

 parted. Had I given them one or two combs 

 containing honey and pollen they would have 

 stayed. 



I have seen several colonies deserting their 

 hives for want of honey, and especially of pol- 

 len. T returned them after having attended to 

 their needs, and they were happy to stay. I 

 have seen, also, bees deserting as soon as they 

 were brought out of a cellar which had been 

 too warm. For several \;eeks these bees had 

 been anxious to have a good flight; their hives 

 had b(>en for them a prison, and they availed 

 themselves of the first chanc(> to depart. 



All these occurrences, showing that bees 

 swarm to find better abodes when they are dis- 

 satisfied with the circumstances in which they 

 are, induced me to investigate the causes of 

 natural swarming, which, so far, had been con- 

 sidered as a natural impulse given to bees in 

 order to replenish the earth. 



As bees generally swarm when their hives are 

 full, the first thing to be considered was wheth- 

 er the lack of room was not the cause of 

 swarming, especially as it is well known that 

 bees in small hives swarm more than in larger 

 ones. Now, the question arose: '"How much 

 room is needed to accommodate the most pro- 



lific queen?" For several years I kept an ob- 

 serving-hive, and liad noticed that a good 

 queen can lay about six eggs per minute, or 360 

 per hour. If we suppose that she lays half the 

 time, or 13 hours in :i4, we have 360x12, or 4320 

 eggs per day, during the best time of the sea- 

 son. 



A well-known German bee-keeper, Mr. Von 

 Berlepsch, having hivud a swarm on empty 

 combs, counted the eggs laid by its queen dur- 

 ing the first 24 hours, and found a few more 

 than .3000. But, having probably considered 

 this number as unusually large, he did not draw- 

 any inference from it, for he did not enlarge 

 his small hives. Yet, since a queen taken at 

 i-andom can lay 30OO eggs to-day, I can not 

 see why she did not lay the same number yes- 

 terday, or why she will not lay as many to- 

 morrow, if the circumstances have not chang- 

 ed. To verify whether a queen is able to lay 

 3000 or more eggs per day for several weeks, it 

 is indispensable to give her colony a number of 

 cells sufficient to receive her eggs for 21 days, 

 besides the cells coijtaining the provisions of 

 honey and pollen. 



I had several large hives built to produce 

 comb honey in small boxes placed at both sides 

 of the brood, after the idea of Jasper Hazen. I 

 resolved to use them for my experiments. 

 These hives could accommodate 14 Quinby sus- 

 pended frames, 18x10'^ inches inside: and my 

 enlarged American hives could accommodate 

 H) frames. I filled these frames with worker 

 combs and watched the results. We have 

 these hives yet in our home apiary. I soon as- 

 certained that these hives were too large, even 

 for my best queens, whose laying, during: the 

 best seasons, exceeded 4000 eggs per day for 21 

 days, and I concluded that a Quinby hive, with 

 lOfranu's and a pai'tition-board, would be suffi- 

 cient. These 10 frames, containing 104,,500 

 worker-cells, can accommodate the laying of 

 from 3500 to 4000 eggs, leaving 20.000 or 30.000 

 cells for the provisions. All the Quinby hives 

 that we have made since have 10 frames and a 

 partition-board. These hives are larger than a 

 12-frame Langstroth; yet, every year, when the 

 white clover begins to bloom, nearly every one 

 of them is full of brood and of bees, ready to 

 bring honey into the upper story, or to swarm, 

 if we delay, even for very few days, the enlarg- 

 ing of the room. 



In the spi'ing of 1880 we had put our upper 

 stories on the hives, as we usually do in the last 

 part of J^Iay: but the bees, for a week or more, 

 did not bring any honey, when, the wind hav- 

 ing changed, we noticed a booming in the apia- 

 ry. Two days aftei-. although \\e had raised 

 tiieii' hives from the bottom-l)oards. several col- 

 onies were gathered outside of theii' hives. 

 Their upper stories, containing each about 50 

 lbs., had been filled in less than three days. We 

 liastened to put a second story undei- the first; 

 yet some swarmed — dissatisfied, doubtless, 

 with these large hives which had proved too 

 small to receive their daily crop. As it was im- 

 possible for us to enlarge the space in our six 

 apiaries on the same day, we had an unusual 

 number of swarms, 15 or 20 per cent, if I am not 

 mistaken; more in our Langstroth hives, and 

 such swarms! One of them was so large that 

 we had to give it two npyjer stories on the even- 

 ing after it was hived. The bees in these large 

 hives were therefore as much crowded as a col- 

 ony in a small hive; for it is not the size of the 

 hive which excites the bees to swarm; it is the 

 comparative narrowness of their abode: it is 

 the lack of empty cells to receive the harvest 

 and the eggs of the queen. When the honey 

 comes in slowly, the enlarging of the room with 

 empty frames may suffice; but when the crop 

 is very abundant, as the workers do not lUve to 



