448 THE ITALIAN BEE. 



in the season than the comnnon kind, and also more fre- 

 quently. Capt. Baldenstien's want of success was most 

 probably the result of a deficiency of drone comb in his 

 Italian hives, as a consequence of which only few drones 

 were produced." Dzierzon guarded against this by giving 

 to a very large colony, which ordinarily produced drones in 

 great numbers, a fertile queen very early in the season. 

 Thousands of drones soon made theiy appearance, and he 

 immediately formed an artificial colony by removing this 

 queen with a sufiicient number of workers, adding worker 

 brood from other colonies. On the twelfth day following, 

 he heard a young queen " teeting" in the parent hive, and to 

 his surprise, a large swarm issued from it on the same day, 

 though the weather was then cool and cloudy. This swarm 

 came forth suddenly without any previous indication of its 

 intention, just as after-swarras usually do. On a similar day, 

 Dzierzon says he had never seen a first swarm of common 

 bees leave. So cold was the weather, that some of the bees 

 became chilled before the swarm was hived. As the swarm 

 was unusually large, he divided it into two, as he was able 

 to procure an additional queen from the parent hive. Both 

 throve well, and each of the queens was impregnated' by an 

 Italian drone. From this occurrence he judged that these 

 bees have an instinctive proclivity to swarm early. Our 

 common kind would have lingered long, rather than swarm 

 in weather so cold and cloudy. 



The main thing to be attended to in any localities where 

 common bees are found or kept, is to secure the production 

 of drones in numbers overwhelmingly large ; though Dzier- 

 zon is under the impression that where both kinds of drones 

 exist in about equal numbers, the Italian queens will usually 

 encounter Italian drones, both queens and drones being more 

 active and agile than the common kind. Besides, the ner- 



