366 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



June, 1922 



guage were searched from volume I up to 

 that time and an abstract made of every 

 swarm-control plan published. The same 

 thing was done with the books on bee- 

 keeping published in English. These ab- 

 stracts were then carefully studied, and, 

 after eliminating those plans which are not 

 effective in swarm control, the others were 

 sorted into groups on the basis of similarity 

 in principle. Finally, out of the great mass 

 of apparently conflicting methods and opin- 

 ions, all of the effective remedies for swarm- 

 ing were found to come under three gen- 

 eral heads, viz., taking away the brood, tak- 

 ing away the queen and separating the 

 brood and the queen within the hive. One 

 plan involved killing the brood with the un- 

 capping knife, but this is simply one way 

 of taking away the brood. In other words, 

 in the final analysis every one of the hun- 

 dreds of swarm-control plans thus far given 

 in beekeeping literature either creates a 

 condition of the colony comparable to a cer- 

 tain degree to the recently hived natural 

 swarm or the parent colony. 



But the most interesting thing in all this 

 is the fact that every remedy for swarming, 

 that has proven successful thus far, involves 

 ' ' a temporary disturbance in the continuity 

 of the emergence of brood. ' ' 



Whether this break in the emergence of 

 brood has anything to do with the bees' 

 giving up swarming is another question. In 

 writing the bulletin referred to above the 

 author was careful to avoid saying that it 

 does, although personally he believes that 

 the break in the emergence of young bees is 

 an important factor in causing the bees to 

 give up swarming. 



Mr. Cole points out that when the queen 

 is taken away, all queen-cells destroyed at 

 the time of taking away the queen, and 

 again 10 days later when a young laying 

 queen, is given, the bees give up swarming 

 although the break in the emergence of 

 young bees does not occur until 11 days 

 later; and that if this break in emergence 

 has anything to do with tlie giving up of 

 swarming the bees would thus react to a 

 condition 11 days before it arrives, which, 

 of course, is not at all probable. 



The error Mr. Cole makes here is in as- 

 suming that the swarming impulse disap- 

 pears within 10 days after taking away the 

 queen. While the colony is queenless, of 

 course it can not swarm or at least it usu- 

 ally does not, although such colonies some- 

 times swarm and return to the hive as if the 

 bees thought they had a queen. After such 

 colonies are made hopelessly queenless by 

 destroying the queen-cells ten days after 

 taking away the queen, the swarming im- 

 pulse is sometimes still so strong that if a 

 virgin queen or even a young laying queen 

 is given immediately the colony may swarm, 

 leaving the parent colony hopelessly queen- 

 less. In comb-honey production when a lay- 

 ing queen is given after a period of ten 

 days of queenlessness, the colony often pro- 



ceeds to build queen-cells as soon as young 

 larvae from the new queen are present, and 

 under some conditions will swarm within a 

 week after the new queen begins to lay. 



In their early experiments to prevent 

 swarming by removing the queen when pro- 

 ducing comb honey, Elwood and Hethering- 

 ton found it necessary to keep the colony 

 queenless at least 18 days, thus making in 

 most cases 21 days before the new queen 

 would begin to lay after being released from 

 the introducing cage. Gradually this time 

 has been shortened as better methods of 

 causing the bees to give up swarming have 

 been worked out, so that it is now possible 

 to get rid of the swarming impulse to a suf- 

 ficient degree by 10 days of actual queen- 

 lessness. 



Of course in extracted-honey production 

 the 10-day period is usually sufficient if the 

 management is good, but this is by no 

 means true for all localities in comb-honey 

 production. The influence of a large num- 

 ber of recently emerged young bees in the 

 brood-chamber is well illustrated by the ease 

 with which recently hived swarms can be 

 induced to swarm again within 10 days or 

 two weeks after being hived by shaking the 

 young bees from the parent colony in with 

 the swarm at the time of moving the parent 

 colony to a new location a week after the 

 swarm issued to prevent after-swarming. 

 The Editor has done this in scores of cases 

 in producing comb honey. 



The break of about two weeks in brood- 

 rearing, which occurred last year in May in 

 the northern states, resulted in a season of 

 no swarming in those localities where the 

 honey flow closed early in July, though 

 there was swarming later in localities hav- 

 ing a later honey flow. This break in 

 brood-rearing was noted editorially in this 

 journal at that time, page 409, with the pre- 

 diction that there would be no swarming 

 during the usual swarming season in por- 

 tions of the clover region. In the Editor's 

 apiaries in northern Indiana only one col- 

 ony out of about 200 colonies started 

 queen-cells during the swarming season, this 

 one being apparently a case of supersedure. 

 The colonies were exceedingly strong and 

 were run for comb honey, the yield being 

 an average of a little over three supers per 

 colony. The break in brood-rearing is ap- 

 parently the only explanation of the total 

 lack of swarming in this case. 



I 



I 



Ql= 



nS3 j^oj: 



THE bill to regulate tlio importation of 

 honeybees into this country, mentiohed in 



our last issue, was 

 The Isle of Wight introduced into 

 Disease Bill. the House of Eep- 



r e s e nt.atives on 

 April 21 as House Bill 11390 by Representa- 

 tive Haugen, Chairman of the Committee on 

 Agriculture. It was also introduced in the 

 Senate on April 25 as Senate Bill .3506 by 

 Senator Norris, Chairman of the Agricnl- 



