154 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



evidently quite young. After the tumult of swarming is 

 entirely over, not a bee that did not participate in it, seeks 

 afterwards to join the new colony, and not one that did, 

 seeks to return. What determines some to go, and others 

 to stay, we have no certain means of knowing. 



How wonderfully abiding the impression made upon an 

 insect, which in a moment causes it to lose all its strong 

 affection for the old home in which it was bred, and which 

 it has entered, perhaps hundreds of times ; so that when 

 established in another hive, though only a few feet distant, 

 it never afterwards pays the slightest attention to its former 

 abode ! Often, when the hive into which the new swarm is 

 put, is not removed from the place where the bees were 

 hived, until some have gone to the fields, on their return, 

 they fly for hours, in ceaseless circles about the spot where 

 the missing hive stood. I have often known them to con- 

 tinue the vain search for their companions until they have, at 

 length, dropped down from utter exhaustion, and perished 

 in close proximity to their old homes ! 



It has been already stated that the old queen, if the 

 weather is favorable, generally leaves about the time that 

 the young queens are sealed over, to be changed into 

 nymphs. In about eight days more, one of these queens 

 hatches, and the question must now be decided whether any 

 more colonies are to be sent out that season, or not. If the 

 hive is well filled with bees, and the season in all respects 

 promising, this question is generally decided in the affirma- 

 tive ; although colonies often refuse to swarm more than 

 once when they are very strong, and when we can assign no 

 reason for such a course ; and they sometimes swarm repeat- 

 edly, to the utter ruin of both the old stock, and the after- 

 swarms. 



If the bees decide to swarm again, the first hatched queen 



