224 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



If this plan of forming nuclei, were attempted earlier in 

 the afternoon, il would be difficult to prevent the bees from 

 communicating on the wing, and going to the nucleus which 

 contains their queen. If, however, the bees when first 

 shaken out of the temporary hive, are so thoroughly 

 sprinkled, as not to be able to take wing and unite together, 

 this mode of forming colonies may be practiced at any hour 

 of the day; and an experienced Apiarian may prefer to do 

 it, as soon as he has fairly hived the new swarm. 



When the bees are shaken out in front of a hive which has 

 a sealed queen, or eggs from which they can raise one, 

 having a whole night in which to accustom themselves to 

 their new situation, they will be found, the next day, to ad- 

 here to the place where they were put, with as much 

 tenacity as a natural swarm to their new hive. How won- 

 derful that the act of swarming should so thoroughly impress 

 upon the bees, an absolute indisposition to return to the 

 parent stock I If this were a fixed and invariable unwilling- 

 ness, a sort of blind, unreasoning instinct, it would not be so 

 surprising, but we have already seen that when the bees lose 

 their queen, they return, in a very short time, to the stock 

 from which they issued. If the nuclei formed in the man- 

 ner just described, found in their new hive, no means of 

 obtaining a queen, they would return, next morning, to the 

 parent stock. 



When the Apiarian can obtain a forced swarm from some 

 other Apiary, two or three miles from his own, it may be 

 divided into nuclei, which will prosper equally well; and if 

 he cannot conveniently obtain a forced swarm from -an 

 Apiary, at least a mile distant, he may, before the bees begin 

 to fly out in the Spring, transport one of his stocks to a 

 neighbor's, and force from it a swarm at the desired tlnue. 

 Even if it is moved not more than half a mile oflF, at a time 



