SWARMING AND HIVING, 153 



or the cornice of a building, and have been succeeded, be- 

 fore long, by a whole colony. The importance of these 

 remarks will be more obvious, when I come to discuss the 

 proper mode of hiving bees. 



Having described the common method of procedure pur- 

 sued by the new swarm, when left without interference to 

 their natural instincts, it is time to return to the parent 

 stock from which they emigrated. 



In witnessing the immense number which have abandoned 

 it, we might naturally suppose that it must be almost en- 

 tirely depopulated. It is sometimes asserted that as bees 

 swarm in the pleasantest part of the day, the population is 

 replenished by the return of large numbers of workers that 

 were absent in the fields ; this, however, can seldom be the 

 case, as it is rare for many bees to be absent from the hive 

 at the time of swarming. 



To those who limit the fertility of the queen to 200, or at 

 most 400 eggs per day, 'the rapid replenishing of the hive 

 after swarming, must ever be a problem incapable of solu- 

 tion; but to those who have ocular demonstration that she 

 can lay from one to three thousand eggs a day, it is no mys- 

 tery at all. A sufficient number of bees is always left be- 

 hind, to carry on the domestic operations of the hive, and as 

 the old queen departs only when the population of the hive 

 is super-abundant; and when thousands of young bees are 

 hatching daily, and often 30,000 or more, are rapidly ma- 

 turing, in a short time the hive is almost as populous as it 

 was before swarming. Those who assert that the new col- 

 ony is composed of young bees which have been forced to 

 emigrate by the older ones, have certainly failed to use their 

 eyes to much advantage, or they would have seen, in hiving 

 a new swarm, that it is composed of both young and old ; 

 some, having wings ragged from hard work, while others are 



