226 natural swarming. 



Secondary or After-Swarms. 



444. Having described the method commonly pursued 

 for hiving a new swarm, we return to the parent-colony from 

 which tliey emigrated. 



From the immense number which have abandoned it, we 

 should naturally infer that it must be nearly depopulated. To 

 those who limited the fertility of the queen to four hundred 

 eggs a day, the rapid replenishing of a hive, after swarm- 

 ing, must have been inexplicable ; but to those who have 

 seen her laj' from one to four thousand eggs a day, it is no 

 mystery at all (40). Enough bees remain to carry on the 

 domestic operations of the hive ; and as the old queen de- 

 parts only when there is a teeming population, and when 

 thousands of young are daily hatching, and tens of . thou- 

 sands rapidly maturing, the hive, in a short time, is almost as 

 populous as it was before swarming. 



Those who suppose that the new colony consists wholly 

 of young bees, forced to emigrate by the older ones, if they 

 closely examine a new swarm, will lind that while some 

 have the ragged wings of age, others are so young as to be 

 barely able to fly. 



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

 not participate in it, attempts 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. How wonderful must be the impression made 

 upon an insect, to cause it in a few minutes so completely 

 to lose its strong affection for the old home, that when 

 established in a hive only a few feet distant, it pays not the 

 slightest attention to its former abode ! 



445. It has already been stated that, if the weather is 

 favorable, the old queen usually leaves near the time that 

 the young queens are sealed over to be changed into 



