150 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



tlie point of starration, the bees instinctively cast out 

 their young, and ■wisely refuse to set eggs. Their combs 

 become empty of brood ; their numbers decrease ; their 

 bankruptcy blights them for a month, if not for a whole 

 season. We speak now of stock-hives in the months of 

 April, May, and June. 



Look now at swarms lately hived. Every natural 

 swarm can live three days on the food it takes from the 

 mother hive. The bees of artificial swarms, being hurried 

 out of their mother hives, have not all filled their bags so 

 well as those of natural swarms. If rainy weather over- 

 take these young swarms, and continue some days, they 

 ■H-ill starve if not fed. Thousands of swarms are ruined 

 for want of feeding after being put into empty hives. If 

 they do not die right out, they never recover from the 

 blight and blast of hunger then undergone. 



We have known swarms starved out of their liives. 

 Having made a few pieces of comb, and being without 

 food, no eggs were set in them, and the bees, tlirough sheer 

 want, cast themselves on the wide world. These are 

 called "hunger swarms," and their name has a painful 

 significance. 



But if swarms are well and liberally fed in rainy 

 weather, after being hived, they rapidly build combs, and 

 these combs are as rapidly filled with eggs from pregnant 

 queens. A few pounds of sugar given to a swarm will 

 enable it to build combs to its own circumference and 

 size ; ■ and these combs, as we have seen, will soon be 

 filled with brood, which brood, in three weeks, will come 

 to perfection, and thus greatly add to the strength of the 

 community. During the cotton panic, and at other times 

 when no work was going on, some of the wealthy miU- 

 owners of Lancashire kept their machinery in order, and 



