288 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
and the prolonged continuance of a period of 
inaction may be occasioned by the want of a 
princess to succeed the queen. Or it may be that 
the hive contains an unfruitful queen, and a weak 
population with insufficient warmth, when little of 
store is collected and often no drone eggs are 
produced, these being always the preliminary of 
royal cells. A continuation of unfavourable weather, 
moreover, notwithstanding the sealing up of the 
queen-cells, will often prevent any issue of a swarm ; 
for if the start should not have been made till 
within two days of the hatching of the first 
princess, she and all her sisters are destroyed; 
though new royal cells are set on unless the idea of 
swarming is abandoned for the season. Neither as 
to swarming will the state of the thermometer be 
an invariable guide. I have rarely seen it reach as 
high as 95° within a stock-hive, but I have 
observed the issue of swarms at a temperature four 
or five degrees below this; and in one instance it 
occurred when the thermometer ranged but little 
above 80°.* 
It is common to imagine that a swarm consists 
exclusively of the young bees of the season; but 
this is almost the reverse of the fact. The strictly 
young bees, as we know, are the nurse bees, and 
nothing short of absolute proof would convince us 
that these leave the hive before their natural time 
* Some naturalists, and amongst them Huber, have imagined a 
much higher degree of heat at the time of swarming ; but in this there 
must be some error, for I have proved thit the combs collapse and fall 
at a temperature a little above 100°. I am almost ashamed to say that 
this experiment cost me the destruction of a fine stock-hive. 
