ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 151 



by dividing the old hive, the queenless part has thousands 

 of cells filled with brood and eggs, and young bees will be 

 hatching for at least three weeks : by this time, the young 

 queen will ordinarily be laying eggs, so that there will be 

 an interval of not more than three weeks, during which 

 the colony will receive no accessions. But when a new 

 swarm is formed, in the way above described, not an egg 

 will be laid for nearly three weeks, and not a bee hatched 

 for nearly six. During all this time, the colony will 

 rapidly decrease ;* and by the time the progeny of the 

 young queen begins to mature, the new hive will have so 

 few bees, that it would seldom be of any value, even if 

 its combs were of the best construction. 



After thoroughly testing this last plan of artificial 

 swarming, I have found that it has not the least practical 

 value ; and as this is the method which Apiarians have 

 usually tried, it is not strange that hitherto, they have 

 almost unanimously condemned artificial swarming. 



Another method of artificial swarming has been zeal- 

 ously 'advocated, which, seeming to require the smallest 

 amount of labor or skill, would be everywhere practiced, 

 if it could only be made effectual. A number of hives are 

 to be connected by holes, so as to allow the bees to travel 

 from any one to all the others. The bees, on this plan, are 

 to colonize themselves, and it is asserted that in due time, 



edge with worker-cells, for the accommodation of the young queen. So uniformly 

 do bees with an unhatched queen build coarse, or drone-comb, that often a 

 glance at the combs of a new colony, will show either that it is queenless, or that, 

 having been so, it has just reared a new queen. It is not necessary that a queen, 

 should have commenced laying eggs to induce her colony to build worker-cells ; I 

 have knowp a strong swarm with a virgin queen, almost to fill their hive with 

 beautiful worker-comb, before a single egg was deposited in the cells. 



* Every observing bee-keeper must have noticed how rapidly even a large 

 swarm diminishes in number, for the first three weeks after it has been hived. 

 So great is the mortality of bees during the height of the working-season, that 

 often, in less than that time, it does not contain one half its original number. 



