ARTIFICIAL SWARMING AND DIVISION OF SWARMS. 



113 



CHAPTER XIX. 



ARTIFICIAL SWARMING AND DIVISION 

 OF SWARMS. 



There is nothing like natural swarming. A natural swarm issues 

 forth with all the conditions demanded by Nature. Every mem- 

 ber of the swarm has started from the parent hive in a first-class 

 temper, and with a determination to succeed and to overcome 

 every obstacle. More especially is it so if it be a spring or first 

 swarm from that hive of the season. The ordinary workers, the 

 rank-and-file, are the most numerous. Upon them falls the bulk 

 of the labour — the field-work for the supply of the essential stores 

 for establishing and sustaining the future home. There is alsc- 

 a good supply of nurse bees. Of course, they are only young 

 workers. Although there are no developing brood for them to 

 attend to, there soon will .be, because the queen or mother bee- 

 accompanying the early spring swarm is in a condition to com- 

 mence depositing her eggs as soon as the necessary domestic arrange- 

 ments are sufficiently far advanced to permit of it. A few drones 

 or male bees will also be mixed up in the swarm — that, appar- 

 ently, disorderly crowd. 



A similar multitude of bees, too, are left in the parent hive, 

 with the exception of a fertile queen. Similar and yet dissimilar. 

 Similar in that there are working bees — field-labourers and the 

 nursing bees, and also drones. Dissimilar, because in addition, 

 there are developing bees, i.e., brood in all its stages of development 

 from the eggs that have only been laid a few hours to the be© 

 just emerging from the chrysalis. I said above, with tTiis 

 exception — a fertile queen. The parent hive the swarm 

 quitted contains a queen, but she is not fertile. Until 

 the old queen that is fertile has departed, she remains 

 in her cell. She may not become fertile till some days, 

 after the departure of swarm under review. During the tenure 

 of the queen that accompanied the swarm, every day she religiously 

 fulfilled all the conditions that Nature demanded of her — the pro- 

 duction of eggs. While in health and strength every day saw 

 hundreds, nay thousands, of eggs deposited, one in each cell. There 



