36 BEGINNER'S BEE BOOK 



begin to lay out in large clusters outside the 

 hive. Practical beekeepers of the present day 

 furnish the bees with sufficient room in which 

 to work, and thus guard against such loafing. 

 Under such conditions there was nothing for 

 the bees to do but to swarm, since there was not 

 room for them all in the hive, and, with honey 

 abundant in the fields, the instinct to gather it 

 was too strong to permit them to spend a sum- 

 mer in idleness. 



When the beekeeper finds a mrniber of 

 queen cells in the hive at this season of the year 

 he knows that the bees are preparing to swarm 

 and makes plans accordingly. The bees will 

 build queen cells also, when the queen is grow- 

 ing old and beginning to fail. This is done to 

 insure a j^oung queen to replace the feeble 

 mother and is called " supercedure." When 

 the old queen is replaced during the honey flow 

 the bees are very likely to swarm anyway, even 

 though there is an abundance of room in the 

 hive. 



