FORMATION OF ARTIFICIAL SWARMS. 221 



In all cases of virgin swarms, it is the better practice to 

 kill the queen and return the bees to the parent hive. The 

 greater the number of the swarms which a hive throws off, 

 the less is the quantity of honey which that hive contains, 

 and it is a general remark that those hives which swarm 

 three times generally perish in the autumn. If a swarm be 

 placed in a hive too spacious for it, the proportion of wax to 

 honey will be as three to one. On the other hand, the swarms 

 which are put into smaller hives furnish a greater quantity 

 of honey than those in the large ones, for this reason that 

 they employ less of their time in the construction of their 

 combs, and that the bees seldom think of collecting honey, 

 until the combs be finished. 



In regard to artificial swarms, as an object of experimental 

 curiosity they may be tolerated, but as objects of profit or of 

 benefit to the proprietor, they ought to be discarded from 

 the apiary altogether. The truth cannot be too strongly 

 impressed upon the mind of every keeper of bees, that one 

 strong and populous hive is worth half a dozen weak ones. 

 The prosperity of a hive, and the harvest that is reaped from 

 it, chiefly depend upon its numerical power ; any mode of 

 practice, therefore, which tends to the diminution of that 

 power, must be attended with loss and injury to the pro- 

 prietor, and to the eventual destruction of the hive. If, there- 

 fore, we take into our consideration the formation of artificial 

 swarms, which has a direct and positive tendency to the 

 actual destruction of all numerical power, by the division and 

 subdivision of the community of the bees, we require no 

 further argument to induce every keeper of bees to explode 

 the practice altogether, and to look upon it as fitted only for 

 the fanciful theorist or the speculative amateur. In the 

 establishment of artificial swarms, there is another very 

 serious drawback to be taken into the account, which is, that 

 the swarms are always considered as forming the greater part 

 of the profit of an apiary, whether they be sold immediately 



