HIVE MANAGEMENT 97 



season of greatest brood rearing it often 

 results in swarm prevention, but if a sin- 

 gle cell is overlooked we may be quite cer- 

 tain tbe bees will swarm. Often too, they 

 will get the "swarming fever" in their 

 veins and even though the queen cells are 

 removed they go ahead and swarm any- 

 how. They are almost certain to do this 

 if they once get a good start on a queen 

 cell so we must nip these royal cradles 

 "in the bud" — to change the figure of 

 speech. 



Sometimes, too, a colony will appar- 

 ently go mad with the desire to swarm in 

 spite of all that can be done. I have seen 

 them insist upon swarming, not once but 

 repeatedly, until the parent colony was al- 

 most destitute of bees to care for the 

 young brood. One year I recall, the bees 

 in our section had a very peculiar habit of 

 throwing off what we called "crazy" 

 swarmS'. They would swarm out with 

 every appearance of intending to leave 

 the neighborhood and after half an hour 



