SWARMING AND HIVING. 147 



Having described the common method of procedure pursued 

 by the new swarm, when left to their natural instincts, it is 

 time to return to the parent stock from which they emigrated. 



In witnessing the immense number which have abandoned 

 it, we might naturally suppose that it must be almost entirely 

 depopulated. It is sometimes asserted that as bees swarm 

 in the pleasantest part of the day, the population is replen- 

 ished by the return of large numbers of workers that were 

 absent in the fields ; this, however, can seldom be the case, 

 as it is rare for many bees to be absent from the hive at the 

 time of swarming. 



To those who limit the fertility of the Queen to two hun- 

 dred, or at most to four hundred eggs per day, the rapid 

 replenishing of the hive after swarming, must ever be a 

 problem incapable of solution ; but to those who have ocular 

 demonstration that she can lay from one to three thousand 

 eggs a day, it is no mystery at all. A sufficient number of 

 •bees to carry on the domestic operations of the hive, is 

 always left behind ; and as the old Queen departs only when 

 the population of the hive is super-abundant, and when 

 thousands of young bees are hatching daily, and often thirty 

 thousand or more, are rapidly maturing, in a short time the 

 hive is almost as populous as it was before swarming. Those 

 who assert that the new colony is composed of young bees 

 which have been forced to emigrate by the older ones, have 

 certainly failed to use their eyes to much advantage, or they 

 would have seen, in hiving a new swarm, that it is composed 

 of both young and old ; some, having wings ragged from 

 hard work, while others are evidently quite young. After 

 the tumult of swarming is entirely over, not a bee that did 

 not participate in it, seeks afterwards to join the new colony, 

 and not one that did, seeks to return. What determines 

 some to go, and others to stay, we have no certain means of 

 knowing. 



