240 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 
471. Messrs. Langstroth and Dzierzon were the first ob- 
servers who had noticed the bearing of this remarkable fact 
on artificial increase. It may, at first, seem unaccountable 
that bees should build only comb unfit for breeding, when 
their young queen will so soon require worker-cells for her 
eggs; but it must be borne in mind, that at such times they 
are in an ‘‘abnormal’’ condition. In a state of nature, 
they seldom swarm until their hive is full of comb; or if 
they do, their numbers are so reduced, that they are rarely 
able to resume comb-building, until the young queen has 
hatched. 
The determination of bees having no mature queen, to 
build comb designed only for storing honey, and unfit for 
rearing workers, shows very clearly the folly of attempting 
to multiply colonies by dividing-hives, unless the greater 
part of the bees are given to the queen, and the greater part 
of the combs to the queenless half. 
When the queenless part proceeds to supply her loss, if it 
has bees enough to build new comb, it will build such as is 
designed only for storing honey. The next year, if this 
hive is divided, one-half will contain nearly all the brood, 
while the other, having most of its combs fit only for storing 
honey, or raising drones, will be a complete failure. 
So uniformly do bees with an unhatched queen build 
coarse, or drone-comb, that often a glance at the combs of 
a new colony, will show either that it is queenless, or that, 
having been so, it has just reared a new queen (229). 
472. Some Apiarists have attempted to multiply their 
colonies, by removing, when thousands of its inmates are 
ranging the fields, a strong stock to a new stand, and setting 
in its place an empty hive, with a frame of brood-comb, suit- 
able for raising a queen. This method is still worse than 
the one just described. One half of the dividing-hive was 
filled with breeding comb, while this empty hive having next 
to none, all that is built before the queen hatches, will be 
