96 Swarming. 



CHAPTER III. 



SWARMING, OR NATURAL METHODS OF IN- 

 CREASE. 



The natural method by which an increase of colonies among 

 bees is secured, is of great interest, and though it has been 

 closely observed, and assiduously studied for a long period, and 

 has given rise to theories as often absurd as sound, yet, even 

 now, it is a fertile field for investigation, and will repay any 

 who may come with the true spirit of inquiry, for there is 

 much concerning it which is involved in mystery. Why do 

 bees swarm at unseeming times? Why is the swarming 

 spirit so excessive at times and so restrained at other seasons? 

 These and other questions we are too apt to refer to erratic 

 tendencies of the bees, when there is no question but that they 

 foUow naturally upon certain conditions, perhaps intricate and 

 obscure, which it is the province of the investigator to dis- 

 cover. Who shall be first to unfold the principles which 

 govern these, as all other actions of the bees? 



In the spring or early summer, when the hive has become 

 populous, and storing very active, the queen, as if conscious 

 that a home could be overcrowded, and foreseeing such danger, 

 commences to deposit drone-eggs in drone-cells, which the 

 worker-bees, perhaps moved by like considerations, begin to 

 construct, if they are not already in existence. In fact, drone 

 comb is almost sure of construction at such times. No sooner 

 is the drone brood well under way, than the large, awkward 

 queen-cells are commenced, often to the number of ten or fif- 

 teen, though there may be not more than three or four. The 

 Cyprian and Syrian bees often start from fifty to one hundred 

 queen-cells. In these, eggs are placed, and the rich royal jelly 

 added, and soon, often before the cells are even capped — and 

 very rarely before a cell is built, if the bees are crowded, the 

 hives unshaded, the ventilation insufiicient, or the honey-yield 

 very bountiful — some bright day, usually about ten o'clock, 

 after an unusual disquiet both inside and outside the hive, a 

 large part of the worker-bees — ^being ofi" duty for the day, 

 and having previously loaded their honey-sacks — rush forth 

 from the hive as if alarmed by the cry of fire, the queen among 



