222 PLAN OF WILDMAN. 



on their acquisition, or kept by the proprietor as the aug- 

 mentation of his stocks. Now the most effectual method 

 that can be adopted by which that source of profit can be 

 stopped up altogether, is the formation of artificial swarms ; 

 for, notwithstanding the assertions of the German apiarians, 

 who may be considered as the founders of artificial swarms, 

 we never yet succeeded in this country in obtaining a swarm 

 from a hive artificially made ; and to aggravate the evil, 

 we scarcely ever knew an artificial swarm, which survived 

 the winter, except by mere dint of trouble and expense. 

 Schirach may be considered as the great advocate of artificial 

 swarms, and in this country he found a willing and able 

 coadjutor in Wildman, who at first bruited the formation of 

 artificial swarms as one of the most valuable discoveries in 

 apiarian science. By degrees, however, the light burst upon 

 him, and he gradually retracted his warm eulogiums, for he 

 could not wholly shut his eyes to the disadvantages and the 

 ruinous effects of the system. It was, however, the forma- 

 tion of artificial swarms which raised the great and still un- 

 settled question of the common bees being able to generate 

 to themselves a queen from any egg selected by them for the 

 purpose, and in order to explain this more fully, we will give 

 the description of the different methods of making artificial 

 swarms. The plan of Wildman is, to extract from a hive 

 which has either swarmed or which is on the point of swarm- 

 ing, a piece of comb in which there is a sealed royal cell, and 

 to fix such piece of comb in an empty hive. Then he takes 

 from a populous hive a certain number of bees, which he 

 introduces into the hive, in order that they may bring the 

 royal nymph to maturity, and thereby found a monarchy 

 of her own. On the other hand, Schirach maintained, that 

 it was by no means necessary that the egg so transported 

 should be a royal one, for the bees possessed in themselves 

 the power of metamorphosing the egg, which at its maturity 

 would have produced a common bee or a drone into a royal 



