246 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



their young queen will so soon require worker-cells for her 

 eggs; but it must be borne in mind that at such times they 

 are in an "abnormal" condition. In a state of nature, they 

 seldom swarm until their hive is full of comb; or if they do, 

 their numbers are so reduced that they are rarely able to re- 

 sume comb-building, until the young queen has hatched. 



Th^ determination of bees having no mature queen, to 

 build comb designed only for storing honey, and unfit for 

 rearing workers, shows very clearly the folly of attempting 

 to multiply colonies by dividing-hives, unless the greater part 

 of the bees are given to the queen, and th"e greater part of 

 the combs to the queenless half, or unless the Apiarist has 

 enough combs already built or sheets of comb foundation, 

 on hand, to fill up the empty space. 



When the queenless part proceeds to supply her loss, if it 

 has bees enough to build new comb, it will build such as is 

 designed only for storing honey. The next year, if this hive 

 is divided, one-half will contain nearly all the brood, while 

 the other, having most of its combs fit only for storing honey, 

 or raising drones, will be a complete failure. 



So uniformly do bees with an unhatched queen build coarse, 

 or drone-comb, that often a glance at the combs of a new 

 colony, will show either that it is queenless, or that, having 

 been so, it has just reared a new queen. 



4'i'2. Some Apiarists have attempted to multiply their 

 colonies, by removing, when thousands of its inmates are 

 ranging the fields, a strong stock to a new stand, and setting 

 in its place an empty hive, with a frame of brood-comb, suit- 

 able for raising a queen. This method is still worse than the 

 Qne just described. One-half of the dividing-hive was filled 

 with breeding comb, while this empty hive having next to none, 

 all that is built before the queen hatches, will be of a size un- 

 suitable for rearing workers. The queenless part of the 'di- 

 vided hive might also have contained a young queen almost 

 mature, so that the building of large combs would have quickly 

 ceased ; for it is not always necessary that a queen should have 



