64 A MANUAL OF BEE-KEEPING. 



Third. Another very serious objection to natural 

 swarming, as practised with common hives, is, that it 

 furnishes no facilities for making vigorous stocks of late 

 and small swarms. The time and money devoted to 

 feeding small colonies are usually wasted, as the larger 

 portion of them never survive the winter, and most of 

 those that do are so enfeebled, as to be of little value. 

 The more of such stocks a man has, the poorer he will 

 be, for their weakness constantly tempts his strong 

 stocks to plunder them. 



ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



To the perfection of methods of compelling Bees to 

 swarm at will, Bee-masters have long devoted their 

 attention, and the use of bar-frame hives offers great 

 and valuable facilities for this purpose. How annoying 

 it is, after having carefully watched a stock apparently 

 ready to swarm for perhaps a week or two, when our 

 attention has been unavoidably withdrawn for a time, 

 to find that the Bees have issued and gone away, no 

 one knows where. Apiarians engaged in business else- 

 where than at home, have often but a poor chance of 

 hiving their swarms ; therefore, a knowledge of some 

 means of artificial swarming is desirable. Straw skeps 

 and frame hives require different procedure ; for the 

 latter there are several plans ; for the former but one, 

 which is driving ; the method of this is explained in its 

 proper chapter, therefore I will now merely point out 

 when it may be resorted to. The most notable time is 

 when the Bees hang out — this would not happen unless 



