fORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 169 



preventing swarming, and I am not certain that I have yet 

 attained to that. I say profitably preventing it, for there 

 might be such a thing as preventing it in a way that would 

 hardly pay. If a colony disposed to swarm should be 

 blown up with dynamite, it would probably not swarm 

 again, but its usefulness as a honey-gathering institution 

 would be somewhat impaired. Swarming might also be 

 prevented by means of such character as to involve an 

 amount of trouble that would make it unprofitable ; or it 

 might be prevented in such a way as to have a very un- 

 profitable effect upon the honey-crop. The thing I am 

 after is profitable prevention. 



NO DELIGHT IN SWARMS. 



I have read of the great delight felt by the bee-keeper 

 at the sight of an issuing swarm, the bees whirling and 

 swirling in delirious joy, but such things do not appeal to 

 me. I do not like swarming. I never did. I don't think 

 I ever shall. In my forty years of bee-keeping experience, 

 I think I never looked upon the issuing of a swarm with 

 feelings other than those akin to pain, unless it might be 

 the first swarm I ever had. 



BAD MANNERS OF SWARMS. 



I am not an expert at hiving swarms. They don't 

 act nicely for me. After I have climbed a tree with 

 laborious pains and shaken down a swarm with a hive 

 under it at just the right place, the swarm instead of 

 entering in a well-mannered sort of style will just as like 

 as not keep flying back every time it is shaken down, un- 

 less it should take it into its head to give me more exercise 

 by taking another tree. I got a Manum swarm-catcher, 

 but I do not remember that I ever used it with success. 

 One day when I was trying to use it, J. T. Calvert, the 

 energetic business man of the A. I. Root Co., was here. 



