ARTIFICIAL SWARMING 201 



In regions however, where the bees are apt to gather an 

 excess of bee-bread, a young queen, or a seale'd one nearly 

 mature, should be given to them, the second day after the 

 removal of the old one. Otherwise, the cells may be so filled 

 with pollen, as to leave but little room for new brood. A 

 very strong stock, if deprived of their queen, in the height 

 of the honey harvest, and compelled to rear another from the 

 egg, will often fill nearly every cell wjth honey or pollen, 

 before she is prepared to lay. I have occasionally known 

 hives, in a very productive season, when left to themselves, 

 to fill nearly all their combs with honey. The consequences 

 can be easily seen.v But few bees can be reared in the latter 

 part of the season, and when Winter sets in, the colony will 

 be so reduced in numbers, that it cannot maintain heat 

 enough to keep it alive. I have just been examining some 

 of my stocks which are in this condition, (July 1856,) and 

 removing some of the full combs, so as to get room for four 

 or five empty frames in the center of the hive. These will 

 at once be supplied with comb, and the queen will fill them 

 with eggs. This evil can not easily be remedied in hives 

 which do not give the control of the combs. A colony which 

 thus perishes from excess of wealth, furnishes a very apt 

 illustration of the condition of rich men, who are morally 

 dead, from that icy coldness of the heart, engendered by the 

 indulgence of their avaricious propensities. 



I shall now furnish another method of preventing swarming, 

 which may sometimes be employed with very great advan- 

 tage. The size of the queen bee is such that she can not 

 pass through an opening 5-32ds of an inch high, which will 

 just admit a loaded worker. If therefore, the entrance to 

 the hive be contracted to this dimension, she will not be able 

 to leave with a swarm. By cutting a depression of 5-32ds 

 of an inch, on one surface of the blocks which regulate the 



