176 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



I have had combs built of enormous size, nearly four inches 

 through I and these monster combs have afterwards been 

 pieced out on their lower edge, with worker cells for the 

 accommodation of the ycfung Queen. So uniformly do the 

 bees with an unhatched Queen, build in the way described, 

 that I can often tell at a single glance, by seeing what kind 

 of comb they are building, that a hive is queenless, or that 

 having been so, they have now a fertile young Queen. 

 When a new colony is formed, by dividing the old hive, the 

 queenless part has thousands of cells filled with brood and 

 eggs, and young bees will be hourly hatching, for at least 

 three weeks ; and by this time, the young Queen will be 

 laying eggs, so that there will be an interval of not more 

 than three weeks, during which no accessions will be made 

 to the numbers of the colony. But when a new swarm is 

 formed by moving, not an egg will be deposited for nearly 

 three weeks ; and not a bee will be hatched for nearly six 

 weeks; and during all this time, the colony will rapidly de. 

 crease, until by the time that the progeny of the young 

 Queen begins to emerge from their cells, the number of bees 

 in the new hive will be so small, that it would be of no value, 

 even if its combs were of the best construction. 



Every observing bee-keeper must have noticed how rap- 

 idly eVen a powerful swarm diminishes in number, for the 

 first three weeks after it has been hived. In many cases, 

 before the young begin to hatch, it does not contain one half 

 its original number ; so very great is the mortality of bees 

 during the height of the working season. 



I have most thoroughly tested, in the only way in which 

 it can be practiced in the ordinary hives, this last plan of 

 artificial swarming, and do not hesitate to say that it does 

 not possess the very slightest practical value ; and as this is 

 the method which Apiarians have usually tried, it is not 



