THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



369 



it is pertinent to remark that if relied upon 

 too implicitly it might prove a broken reed. 

 If the swarm has a well clipped queen 

 only, and there are no flying queens out- 

 side to unite with it, clipping is certainly 

 efPective; but there can be no guaranty of 

 such conditions. Queens are superseded; 

 accidents happen to them, sometimes, and 

 young queens are reared, and a swarm 

 issuing in such circumstances would, of 

 course, be lost if the fact that a former 

 queen had been clipped were alone relied 

 on. 



SWARMS WITHOUT QUEENS LIKELY TC MIX 

 WITH OTHER COLONIES. 



In the first place, swarms issuing with 

 a clipped queen conduct themselves in 

 quite a different manner from that of 

 those having a perfect one — the latter 

 clustering quickly and completely, as a 

 rule, and if another swarm is out and 

 clustered, are not liable to discover and 

 cluster with it; consequently, they may be 

 secured and promptly hived, while the 

 former, in their search for their queen, 

 hunt the premises over, and if there be a 

 swarm out are sure to find and unite with 

 it, and by thsir dilatoriness give abun- 

 dance of time for other swarms to issue 

 and unite with them. Often they will not 

 cluster at all, and if there has already 

 been any swarming that day, they gener- 

 ally make persistent efforts to adopt the 

 hive of the former swarm; and if there 

 have been several previous swarms the 

 same day, only the most skillful and rapid 

 management can prevent a general mix 

 up. The bees are not only persistent in 

 their attempts to enter strange hives, but, 

 in spite of all, are more or less succesuful; 

 so that often when one, by the use of 

 sheets and smoke, imagines he has done 

 a good job in his efforts to defeat their at- 

 tempts, he finds later that one-half or 

 two-thirds of the swarm have circum- 

 vented him. 



With these facts in view, the stories of 

 those apiarists who practice clipping, of 

 the big yields of single colonies, and of 

 their method of selecting breeders by the 

 quantity of the product of their hives, are 



calculated to excite mirth rather than ad- 

 miration. 



CONSIDERING THE FACTOR OF TALL TREES 

 NEAR THE APIARY. 



It may be objected that sometimes the 

 trees about an apiary are very tall, so 

 that it would be almost impossible to re- 

 cover swarms if they were to have queens, 

 and that it would be better to let two or 

 three per cent. go. and get the rest with- 

 out effort, than to expend the effort nec- 

 essary to capture each swarm. But in 

 an apiary where there are several swarms 

 in a day, there are other things to be con- 

 sidered. If one swarm should cluster in a 

 tall tree out of reach, subsequent swarms 

 could join it, and, at last, if a flying queen 

 should happen to join the cluster, all would 

 desert together; or, if destitute of a queen, 

 would return in a body to some hive where 

 they were not wanted, and make no end 

 of trouble. However, swarms are not by 

 any means partial to high trees, and it is 

 very seldom that they will cluster out of 

 reach. To so place the apiary that a 

 number of small trees, but no tall ones, 

 are in and about the apiary would bs an 

 advisable and sufficient remedy. 



There are some apiarists who seem to 

 think that an apiary can be managed 

 during swarming without the presence of 

 the apiarist, by simply clipping the queens. 

 In my view, such a course would be sim- 

 ply disdstrous. In addition to the disor- 

 ganization already mentioned, there would 

 be the inevitable loss on account of the 

 sulking of the bees; and then in a few 

 days the young queens would begin to 

 emerge, and, as a matter of course, would 

 lead the swarms to pastures new. Even 

 a semi-weekly visit would not be an 

 adequate remedy, for it would not be 

 practical to determine with certainty 

 which colonies had cast swarms. 



A QUEEN-TRAP HAS ADVANTAGES OVER 

 CLIPPING. 



What, then, it will be asked, can be 

 done to secure the advantages supposed 

 to be derived from the clipping of queens ? 

 The best answer I can give is, a good 



