PRIMARY SWARM. 225 



the trouble of hiving a swarm will often be greater than its 

 value. 



433. If the swarm is noticed, when it begins to issue from 

 the parent hive, the practical bee-keeper often harvests it 

 without trouble, by catching the queen (100). Provided with 

 a queen cage (536) he watches for her exit, and as she comes 

 out, he seizes her and places her in the cage. He then re- 

 moves the old hive, and places the new one, ready for the 

 swarm, on its stand, with the caged queen on the platform. 

 The swarm may alight, but as soon as the bees notice their 

 loss, they will return, and will cluster around her; and the 

 hiving of the swarm takes but a few minutes. In a circum- 

 stance of this kind, it is well to return the parent colony to its 

 stand, after the swarm is hived, for, if entirely removed, it 

 would lose all the bees that were in the field, when the swarm 

 left, and would be too much weakened. 



434. To prevent primary swarms from escaping, some 

 bee-keepers clip one of the wings of their queens previous to 

 the swarming season. 



Virgil speaks of clipping the wings of queens, to prevent 

 them from escaping with a swarm. Mr. Langstroth had de- 

 vised a way of doing this, so as to designate the age of the 

 queens :— With a pair of scissors, let the wings, on one side, 

 of a young queen be carefully cut off; when the hives are ex- 

 amined next year, let one of her two remaining wings be re- 

 moved, and the last one the third year. 



As an old queen leaves the hive only with a new swarm 

 the loss of her wings in no way interferes with her usefulness 

 or the attachment of the bees. If, in spite of her inability to 

 fly, she is bent on emigrating, though she has a "will," she can 

 find "no way," but helplessly falls to the groimd, instead of 

 gaily mounting into the air. If the bees find her, they cluster 

 around her, and may be easily secured by the Apiarist; if 

 she is not found, they return to the parent-stock, to await 

 the maturity of the young queens. 



This method will do, provided the apiary ground is bare, 



