ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 65 



the hive were over-populated ; therefore, it is desirable 

 to give immediate relief by driving, or what may be 

 better called forcing a swarm. In driving for a swarm, 

 a fine day must be chosen, and the driving performed as 

 I have elsewhere given instructions. It is essential to 

 consider whether the swarm is to be sent a distance 

 away or to remain at home. A sufficient number of 

 Bees should be driven into the empty skep with the 

 Queen {she being indispensable^, and in the first case we 

 may nearly denude the old hive of the Bees, there will 

 be quite enough abroad in the fields, who on their 

 return home will furnish nurses for the brood, if the old 

 stock be replaced on its former stand. The swarm 

 should be at once tied up, and kept so until it reaches 

 its new home. This mode of procedure cannot be 

 adopted with safety if the stock and the swarm are to 

 remain near together, as so many Bees would desert the 

 swarm for their old home, that the new colony would, 

 from want of strength, be practically useless. We may 

 remedy this in various ways. The swarm may be 

 temporarily sent away a distance of at least a mile and a 

 half, and the old stock be replaced on its former stand ; 

 the Bees which return home from the fields will then be 

 found sufficient to carry on the work of the hive. After a 

 few days the swarm may, after sunset, be brought back, 

 when the Bees will have forgotten their old locality. An- 

 other and a very good way is to place the denuded hive 

 on the stand of some other strong stock in the Apiary, 

 removing that one a few yards away ; the returning Bees, 

 although probably very much surprised at the new order 

 of things in their home, will not hesitate to make the 

 best of their misfortune, and proceed to hatch the brood 

 and raise a Queen. In the swarming season the combs 

 of a strong stock contain such an immense number of 



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