Dec. 1, 1911 



E. M. Gibson's scheme for avoiding lifting as much as possible. 



DECAPITATING BROOD TO PREVENT SWARMS. 



BY B. M. GIBSON. 



My opinion has been asked in regard to 

 decapitating brood to prevent swarming. I 

 will say most emphatically, and without 

 fear of contradiction, that my bees do best 

 with their heads left on. I am reminded of 

 a story of two young doctors who were boast- 

 ing of their success in surgery. One of them 

 said he had a patient with tuberculosis, and 

 he just cut out the diseased lung and insert- 

 ed a sponge, which worked all right. The 

 other said he had a case of softening of the 

 brain, and he simply removed the man's 

 head and put on a pumpkin, and the patient 

 was doing well at last reports. When we 

 get so skillful with the knife that we can re- 

 move the bees' heads and give them non- 

 swarming ones I may advocate decapitating, 

 but not before. There is not a shadow of 

 doubt in my mind, however, that, if com- 

 menced early enough, and persisted in long 

 enough, the process would prevent swarm- 

 ing; and so will any other method that 

 will destroy enough bees. 



I encourage my bees in every way pos- 

 sible to make brood, not for the purpose of 

 cutting their heads off later, but for the pur- 

 pose of gathering honey, building up weak 

 colonies, making nuclei, etc., and that is 

 just what I have been doing the past week 

 or more. I look into the brood-nest of each 

 colony to see that there is plenty of stores; 

 and when I find one that is weak I mark it; 

 and when I find one with five or six ' ' slabs ' ' 

 of brood I find the queen, iDut her to one 



side, and take out a frame of hatching brood 

 with the adhering bees and give it to the 

 weak one. In two weeks I do the same 

 thing again, and try to get brood enough to 

 start nuclei. I do not rear all my own 

 queens, but I do not think an apiary is com- 

 plete without a few nuclei to call on during 

 the summer, when one needs a queen badly. 



If colonies so depleted of brood still look 

 too large, and show signs of swarming, I 

 take two frames more of brood from the 

 largest ones and start a new colony, giving 

 the bees of such new colony eight frames of 

 brood and a laying queen, and they will 

 not be far behind the best of them in honey 

 production in the fall. I have but very lit- 

 tle swarming. In fact, all my increase for 

 the past fifteen years has been made by di- 

 viding or buying. 



If, after doing all that I have mentioned 

 above, bees still persist in swarming I unite 

 two or three after-swarms, or any number 

 that will make a rousing colony, into one 

 just before the main flow begins. I am 

 aware that some do not approve of this plan 

 of robbing Peter to pay Paul; but this is 

 another instance in which the word "loca- 

 tion " may be consistently used. In locali- 

 ties where bees have only about two months 

 to build up by the foregoing method, per- 

 haps it would not be wise; but in other por- 

 tions of the country, such as this, where 

 bees have five and sometimes six months to 

 build in, this plan can be worked to advan- 

 tage. 



It is claimed for the process of decapitating 

 brood to prevent swarming that it keeps the 

 live bees busy carrying out the dead, and 



