30 BULLETIN 1349, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
MIGRATIONS OF THE QUEEN WITHIN THE HIVE 
Besides the study of brood-rearing activity in the colony as a whole 
throughout the year, it is of interest to follow the brood-rearing 
activity of the same colony within particular hive bodies during that 
period, because, if adequate room is provided, one hive body is rarely 
the scene of the brood rearing of a normal colony throughout an 
entire season. The existence of such a piece of apiary apparatus as 
a queen excluder suggests how common an occurrence it is for the 
queen to transfer her egg-laying activity from one hive body to 
another. The causes of these vertical migrations and the ultimate 
effects on brood-rearing activity are as yet not fully determined. 
In passing, another type of migration should be noted, which takes 
place entirely within a hive body and which may be termed a hori- 
zontal migration, or a migration from frame to frame. A knowledge 
of the causes and effects of the queen's migrations is of direct value 
in the determination of the size of frame and hive which will most 
directly contribute to a maximum brood-rearing activity. 
Since, all things considered, colonv No. 4 was the most normal of 
the 16, the migrations of its queen in 1921 (Fig. 24) and 1922 (Fig. 25) 
will be considered somewhat at length. The cluster of this colony 
during the winter preceding each of the two active seasons was 
located in the second hive body. It is probably because of this 
fact that brood rearing began there each spring. During the initial 
expansion of each year, however, the queen approached the limit of 
cells available in the second hive body, whereupon the lower hive 
body afforded the only room for an enlargement of the brood area, 
because the first super had not then been added. 
In 1921, the season with inclement weather in April, there was 
comparatively little brood-rearing activity in the first hive body 
at any time. Such weather tends to contract the area occupied by 
the bees, and thus restrict the expansion of the brood area. These 
conditions, prevailing at the time of the queen's first visit to the lower 
hive body, naturally caused her stay there to be rather brief. When 
the weather became better more room was already available in the 
second hive body, owing in part to a further consumption of stores. 
This additional space allowed the queen to increase her egg-laying 
activities without much enlargement of the brood area in the first 
hive body which resulted from her initial visit. Furthermore, 
almost immediately afterwards, in May, nectar began to come in 
rather abundantly and was deposited in the third hive body, which 
had now been put on, the presence of nectar in this super attracting 
the queen upward rather than downward. In the meantime the 
first hive body became well filled with pollen and nectar. It is 
interesting to note that in the latter part of April, in response to the 
inclement weather, the sealed brood curve for the second hive body 
(Fig. 24) remains near a certain level until the effects of the bad 
weather have ceased, and that in the first hive body this curve does 
not rise above the point marking its first appearance. In 1922 
(Fig. 25) the inclement weather occurred before the colony was in 
need of expanding into the lower hive body. The queen was there- 
fore able to complete her stay below, and the sealed brood area in 
the first hive body came to occupy nearly as many cells at the end 
of April as had the brood area in the second hive body at the 
time of the expansion into the first. 
