152 BEE CULTURE. 
complement are in the hive, when a new colony may be 
formed, in the same manner as at the start, and the original 
queen from No. 1 can be put in this, leaving her colony 
queenless to build queen cells. In ten days repeat the 
operation of dividing as before, and in twenty-four hours in- 
sert queen cells, foundation, and division bourds as before. 
You will now have nineteen colonies from the four in early 
spring, and by close attention in supplying good foundation 
as fast as they are prepared to receive it, with a good white 
clover and basswood yield, or a few acres of sweet clover 
pasture, you may expect a fine surplus yield of extracted 
honey. 
If indifferent to the amount of honey, with an average fair 
season, another division can be made with safety, and your 
four colonies will have been increased to thirty-seven. If 
more than four colonies in spring, divisions can be made 
oftener by alternating the best queen between two colonies, 
in order to keep a supply of ripe queen cells always on hand, 
or, better still, keeping nuclei with laying queens, to supply 
as fast as divisions are made, 
SWARMING. 
Several methods of artificial swarming can be practiced 
with success, either of which we think preferable to natural 
swarming, which is always to be avoided where possible, as 
it oceurs just at the season when least desired. If the bees, 
as is sometimes the case, are in box hives, the English 
method of drumming up is among the most feasible, and is 
executed as follows: Select some bright, clear day, when 
the workers are busily engaged in the fields, remove the hive 
ten to twenty feet from the stand, and put in its stead a 
frame hive, with half or two-thirds its complement of frames 
filled with bright, clean combs, or good foundation and 
division boards at the sides; turn the old hive bottom up, 
and invert an empty box over the open end; now blow in a 
little smoke from the lower end of the hive, and commence 
a series of sharp drumming or rapping on the sides of the 
hive with a small hammer or stick ; do not drum hard enough 
to loosen the combs or start them to dripping; after rapping 
four or five minutes, cease for a minute, then resume again, 
and keep 1t up for five minutes longer, or until the bees have 
