AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



757 



Removing i^ueens from Colonies 

 to Prevent iSwarming;. 



Written for theAviertcan Bee Journal 



BY ADRIAN GETAZ. 



In my article dated July 10, 1893, 

 and published on page 24:1, I stated 

 that next summer I would experiment 

 on removing queens to prevent swarm- 

 ing, and, as a help, to use an arrange- 

 ment constructed so as to turn the whole 

 working force without a queen into the 

 supers, cutting them off entirely from 

 the brood-nest for a week, or at least a 

 few days. The theory is, that when 

 bees are hopelessly queenless for a few 

 days, they abandon all ideas of swarm- 

 ing. According to the testimony of men 

 who have removed queens to prevent 

 swarming, this must be not only a 

 theory, but a positive fact. 



Since writing the above, I have re- 

 ceived several letters inquiring into the 

 details of the arrangement, and this 

 article is intended as an answer to all 



B 



Fig. 1. 



those who might inquire about it. I do 

 not intend to take out any patent, or 

 make any secret of it, and all those who 

 are willing to experiment in that direc- 

 tion, or suggest any improvement, are 

 welcome to do so. 



In Fig. 1, B represents the brood-nest, 

 S S the supers ; A, the box through which 

 the bees pass to the brood-nest when the 

 slide D is open, and directly to the su- 

 pers when the slide is closed ; C, a board 

 intercepting the communication between 

 the supers and the brood-nest. A cut 

 E, in the thickness of the board C, per- 

 mits the bees to go from the box A into 

 the supers S S. 



A bee-escape similar to the one used 

 by Mr. Langdon, must be added to the 

 brood-nest, so as to permit the field-bees 

 to come out, but prevent them from 

 going back. That bee-escape is not 

 shown In Fig. 1. The management 

 should be someting like this : 



At the beginning of the honey-flow, or 

 shortly before swarming, put on the 

 board C, and close the slide D so as to 



throw the whole working force into the 

 supers. After they have been there long 

 enough to forget swarming, remove the 

 board C and open the slide D so as to re- 

 store the normal order of things. The 

 past experiments have shown conclu- 

 sively that the young bees left in the 

 brood-nest will give up swarming en- 

 sirely, and, also, according to Messrs. El- 

 wood, Hetherington, and Aikin, that 

 the working bees left hopelessly queen- 

 less will also give up all the swarming 

 ideas they may have. 



The box A ought to be put on early, 

 and left the whole season on the hive, 

 so as to not alter its outward appear- 

 ance and confuse the bees. In fact, it 

 ought to be, if possible, a part of the 

 hive. 



So far, it looked all right, but further 

 reflections revealed at least three diffi- 

 culties to be overcome. The first is, 

 that there is no certainty that the bees, 

 suddenly deprived of their queen and 

 their brood, will stay at their hive. They 

 may disperse in the neighboring hives. 

 In the ordinary course of events, the 

 queen disappears first, then queen-cells 

 are reared on the unsealed brood, and 

 are destroyed later by the apiarist, or 

 the young queens are lost ; then the 

 sealed brood is still there for sometime, 

 so the bees get hopelessly queenless by 

 degrees, so to speak, and stay at their 

 hives. But it is not sure that they 

 would, when both queen and brood 

 would disappear all at once. 



Secondly, the escape from the brood- 

 nest would be very difficult to construct 

 satisfactorily. Any one acquainted 

 with bees will see that no sooner will 

 they find themselves minus queen and 

 brood, than they will institute a thor- 

 ough search for some hole or crack to 

 get in. The escape will not escape their 

 attention, and it will not take them 

 long to find out that their brood and 

 queen are behind that cone ; then a 

 cluster of bees will be formed on that 

 cone, with the probable result of smoth- 

 ering the inside bees. 



The third objection I can see, is that 

 it may not be always possible to avoid 

 pollen in the sections. Bees carry pol- 

 len under either of two conditions — 

 when they need it, and when they gather 

 honey from flowers that dust them over 

 with pollen. In the last case, the pollen 

 gathering is forced, and in the absence 

 of a brood-nest we might expect pollen 

 to be carried into the sections. 



As to the first difficulty, the nature of 

 the case almost immediately suggested 

 a possible remedy. Make the box A 

 large enough to hold one or two brood- 



