176 MANUAL or THE APIARY. 



when time is money. If extra queens are wanting, we have 

 only to look carefully through the old hive and remove all 

 but one of the queen- cells. A little care will certainly make 

 sure work, as, after swarming, the old hive is so thinned of 

 bees, that only carelessness will overlook queen-cells in such 

 a quest. 



TO PREVENT SWARMING. 



As yet we can only partly avert swarming. Mr. Quinby 

 offered a large reward for a perfect non-swarming hive, and 

 never had to make the payment. Mr. Hazen attempted it, 

 and partially succeeded, by granting much space to the bees, 

 so that they should not be impelled to vacate for lack of room. 

 The Quinby hive already described, by the large capability of 

 the brood-chamber, and ample opportunity for top and side- 

 storing, looks to the same end. But we may safely say that 

 a perfect non-swarming hive or system is not yet before the 

 hee-keeping public. The best aids toward non-swarming 

 are shade, ventilation, and roomy hives. But as we shall 

 see in the sequel, much room in the brood-chamber, un- 

 less we work for extracted honey — ^by which means we 

 may greatly repress the swarming fever — prevents our 

 obtaining honey in a desirable style. If we add sections, 

 unless the connection is quite free — in which case 

 the queen is apt to enter them and greatly vex us — we must 

 crowd some to send the bees into the sections. Such crowd- 

 ing is almost sure to lead to swarming. I have, by abrading 

 the combs of capped honey in the brood-chamber, as suggested 

 to me by Mr. M. M. Baldridge — causing the honey to run 

 down from the combs — sent the bees crowding to the sections, 

 and thus deferred or prevented swarming. 



It is possible that by extracting freely when storing is very 

 rapid, and then by rapidly feeding the extracted honey in the 

 interims of honey secretion, we might prevent swarming, 

 secure very rapid breeding, and still get our honey in sections. 

 Too few experiments, to be at all decisive, have led me to look 

 favorably in this direction. 



The keeping of colonies queenless, in order to secure honey 

 without increase, as practiced and advised by some even of 

 our distinguished apiarists, seems to me a very questionable 



