MANUAL OF THE API ART. 101 



CHAPTER in. 



SWARMING OR NATURAL METHOD OF INCREASE. 



The natural method by which an increase of colonies 

 among bees is secured, is of great interest, and though it has 

 been closely observed, and assiduously studied for a long 

 period, and has given rise to theories as often absurd as 

 sound, yet, even now, it is a fertile field for investiga- 

 tion, and will repay any who may come with the true spirit 

 of inquiry, for there is much concerning it which is involved 

 in mystery. Why do bees swarm at unseemly times ? Why 

 is the swarming spirit so excessive at times and so restrained 

 at other seasons? These and other questions we are too apt 

 to refer to erratic tendencies of the bees, when there is no 

 question but that they follow naturally upon certain condi- 

 tions, perhaps intricate and obscure, which it is the province 

 of the investigator to discover. Who shall be first to unfold 

 the principles which govern these, as all other actions of the 

 bees ? 



In the spring or early summer, when the hive has become 

 populous, and storing very active, the queen, as if conscious 

 that a home could be overcrowded, and foreseeing such dan- 

 ger, commences to deposit drone-eggs in drone-cells, which 

 the worker-bees, perhaps moved by like considerations, begin 

 to construct, if they are not already in existence. In fact, 

 drone comb is almost sure of construction at such times. No 

 sooner is the drone brood well under way, than the large, 

 awkward, queen-cells are commenced, often to the number of 

 ten or fifteen, though there may be not more than three or 

 four. In these, eggs are placed, and the rich royal jelly added, 

 and soon, often before the cells are even capped — and very 

 rarely before a cell is built, if the bees are crowded, the 

 hives unshaded, the ventilation insufiBcient, or the honey-yield 

 very bountiful — some bright day, usually about ten o'clock, 

 after an unusual disquiet both inside and outside the hive, a 



