170 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



but little opportunity for laying up surplus honey, while 

 often they do not gather enough even for their own use, and 

 their owner closes the season by purchasing honey to pre- 

 serve them from starvation. The way in which I give the 

 bees that amount of protection in Winter, which conduces 

 most powerfully to early swarming, has already been des- 

 cribed in the Chapter on Protection. 



2. Another serious objection to all the ordinary swarming 

 hives, is the vexatious fact that if the bees swarm at all, 

 they are liable to swarm so often as to destroy the value of 

 both the parent stock and the after-swarms. Experienced 

 bee-keepers obviate this difficulty, by uniting second swarms, 

 so as to make one good colony out of two ; and they re- 

 turn to the parent stock all swarms after the second, and 

 even this if the season is far advanced. Such operations 

 consume much time, and often give much more trouble than 

 they are worth. By removing all the queen cells but one, 

 after the first swarm has left, second swarming in my hives 

 will always be prevented ; and by removing all but two, 

 provision may be made for the issue of second swarms, and 

 yet all after-swarming be prevented. The process of re- 

 turning after-swarms is not only objectionable, on account of 

 the time it requires, having often to be repeated again and 

 again before one queen is allowed to destroy the others ; 

 but it also causes a large portion of ihe gathering season to 

 be wasted ; for the bees seem unwilling to work with ener- 

 gy, so long as the pretensions of several rival queens are 

 unsettled. 



3. Another very serious objection to Natural Swarminof, 

 as practiced with the common hives, is the inability of the 

 Apiarian who wishes rapidly to multiply his colonies, to aid 

 his late and small swarms, so as to build them up into vigor- 

 ous stocks. The time and money which are ordinarily spent 



