THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
99 
After the first revision is finished, and the 
queenless hives united to the weak ones, some 
hives may be found strong and with plenty of 
honey, while others niny have little bruod and 
not sufficient honey. When this is the cu»e, 
a frame of honey from the well-stocked hive 
1 can be taken and put into the one that is short. 
The same can be done with a brood comb; 
but this must be placed right in the middle 
of the brood neat, while the honey may be 
placed next to the glass. In either case all 
the bees must be brushed off the combs before i 
putting into another hive. If, in n fortnight’s 
time, some hives arc still weak, another brood 
comb without bees may be given, and an 
empty worker comb should be placed into the 
hive from which the brood comb has been 
taken, which the bees will soon clean, and the 
queen will commence to deposit her eggs 
Should the bees be short of honey, and no 
Comb honey is to be had, and none to be 
gathered, then they can be fed on thin honey 
mixed with water, or with the best sugar, 
boiled with at least one-third of water, and 
well skimmed As long as the bees have a 
flight nearly every day, thin honey or good 
augnr will do no harm, but will stimulate 
' their breeding. To put lumps of dry sugar 
into a hive shows ignorance of the nature of 
the bees. 
The number of bees, though small at the 
end of the winter, soon increase after young 
bees commence hatching, and, in a very short 
apuee of time, if the weather be warm and 
honey be gathered, the bees will cover every 
> comb, and the queen will deposit eggs in ull 
clean and empty cells. Then the desire for 
building comb arises, and, if the hive is not 
full, the trees commence building new comb, 
and in these the queen prefers to lay her eggs. 
r*hould the brood room not have all frames 
full of comb, now is the time to make the bees 
supply the deficiency, and, ns the comb near 
the glass is seldom used for brood, this is 
taken out, and the second also if there is no 
brood in it ; then put in one or two empty 
fiames with guide comb, and replace the comb 
you took out. 
In a short time the bees will fill these empty 
frames with comb, and it is only necessary to 
examine them occasionally to nee that they are 
building them straight. When these are 
built down nearly to the bottom, one or two 
more may be pul in, and so on till the bruod 
loom is full. As the Italian burs do not 
produce so many drums as the black b« rs, 
there is no necessity to keep the drone coin b 
down; the more Italian drones there are, the 
better is the chance to have the young queens 
purely impregnated ; but black bee* must be 
examined every week and the drone e mb cut 
down, as they always rear by lar too many 
drones, and if the rearing of Italian queens is 
carried on, no black drones should be hatched 
by those who keep Italian bees. 
SWVRMI.NO. 
If ahive is full of brood, and densely crowded 
with bees, they make up their minds to 
swarm, and thus form a new colony. They 
begin to build queen cells on the sides or 
under the ends of the combs, in which the 
queen deposits fertile eggs. In two days the 
egg hatches into a larvae, and some of these 
are fi d by the bees on prepared food ; and the 
seventh o'r eighth day, when the cell is needy 
filled with food, it is capped over. Then the 
queen in the hive will begin to feel uneasy, 
and almost cease laying : she knows the time 
is near for her to leave her home with a 
swarm. The bees themselves exhibit the same 
feeling, and many of the honey-gatherers 
remain at home to be ready to join 
the swarm. On a nice, warm day (not too 
hot,) some of the bees commence running 
about excitedly inside, and around the 
entrance, increasing rapidly in number ; and 
in a lew minutes all the bees intending to join 
the swarm, having first filled themselves with 
honey, rush out into the air, and cruising in a 
zig-zsg near the stand, slowly approach a 
tree, shrub, or other suitable object, which 
they all settle on in one mass. This they do, 
partly to see if the queen is with them, and 
partly to prepare to continue their flight to a 
new home. Sometimes the queen does not 
leave the hive with the swarm. Either she 
likes her old home too well, or, not being 
accustomed to fly out, a sudden fear overtakes 
her at the last moment. In that case the 
bees return and swarm again the next fine 
day. In many instances the queen may not 
be’ able to fly" far, being wing lame, &c , and 
may fall to the ground unnoticed by the bees, 
who will return, os soon a* they perceive their 
loss, to the old hive, and wait for the hatching 
of young queens to swarm again. The fore- 
going remarks apply to a first swarm, but a 
strong hive, in favourable weather, will give off 
one or more after swurms, a sign of which is 
tin peculiar cry of the young queens in the 
cells, as well as the one’hatclud out already, 
the day before swarming. 
A* soon os a swarm bos settled on a branch 
of a tree or bush, it should at once be caught 
in a box or in a hive, and put on its new 
stand in a shaded plac< ; for if it is left for any 
length of time, it will probably stait, espe- 
cially if the day be waim, for a more suitable 
home, and thus" be lost. Before a first swarm 
leaves the old hive, it sometimes sends out 
spies to find a new home, and these spies lead 
the swarm to the plsce they have found ; but 
even If this has oecn done, they will first 
