§XI.] RATIONALE OF SWARMING. -j-j 



box, and remained there through a season " united yet 

 divided." 



If, on the contrary, the queen is not in the swarm at all, 

 the bees sometimes return at once to the hive, and some- 

 times they first institute a search for her majesty. In 

 the famous but cruel experiment of Dr. Warder a whole 

 swarm was starved to death by alteniate deprivations 

 and restorations of their queen repeated at intervals 

 during five days. Of course in his day this devotion was 

 attributed to personal regard. 



Exceptional cases of another kind are also not un- 

 common, in which a colony has made no preparation for 

 swarming (by the formation of royal cells), but on the 

 sudden arrival of warm weather it is enticed — Dzierzon 

 says by the heat itself. Von Berlepsch by the contagious 

 example of neighbouring hives — to carry out in a hurry 

 that which ought to have received some ten days' pre- 

 liminary care. " An internal revolution is made," says 

 the Baron, "and they rush forth for the swarm. The 

 queen, as becomes the pseudo-sovereign of a democratic 

 monarchy, hastens to prove to her people their most- 

 obedient servant, and there the swarm is, hanging on the 

 first convenient tree." On the following morning it will 

 in such case be found that worker cells have been trans- 

 formed into royal ones. 



An instance illustrating the way in which bees some- 

 times make provision beforehand of a place to fly to when 

 about to swarm came under our own notice a few years 



