1977] 
Seeley & Morse — Honey Bee Swarms 
201 
cluster (Ambrose 1974). Scout bees fly from this cluster in search 
of a nest site and later recruit other scouts to newly discovered nest 
sites using the dance language (Lindauer 1955). These communica- 
tion dances are conspicuously performed on the surface of the 
swarm. Thus one can measure approximately how far swarms 
move between parent and new colony sites by reading the recruit- 
ment dances of the scout bees on swarms. 
We used artificial swarms of honey bees which were prepared as 
follows. First, worker bees were shaken off frames of a beehive 
into a swarm cage (15 X 25 X 35 cm) of wood and wire screen sides 
using a large funnel. Then the swarm’s queen was removed from 
the beehive and confined in a standard queen mailing cage (3.2 X 
10 X 1.6 cm) which was suspended amidst the worker bees in the 
larger swarm cage. The bees were kept confined and liberally fed 
with a 50% sucrose solution for at least 24 hours. Bees treated in 
this way behave like a natural swarm. If placed near their parent 
hive, they do not return to it but instead search for a new nest site. 
We controlled swarm size by weighing the workers shaken into the 
swarm cage. The swarms all weighed approximately 2 kg (about 
15,000 bees), a typical size for natural swarms (Fell et al. 1977). 
Each swarm was placed on a wood cross (120 cm high with a 46 
cm long cross member) in the study area by tying the caged queen 
to the cross. The worker bees, upon being shaken from the swarm 
cage, would cluster about the caged queen. A 1 -liter, gravity feeder 
jar provided sugar syrup continuously for each swarm. We posi- 
tioned the swarms in a small clearing surrounded by forest for at 
least 1 km and generally 2 or more km. Thus the swarms were 
surrounded at both small and large distances by a presumably ran- 
dom distribution of natural nest sites. The swarms were run one at 
a time, except for three swarms which we observed simultaneously. 
The three concurrently run swarms were positioned at least 30 m 
from each other. 
We followed each swarm’s selection of a nest site from start to 
finish by reading the scout bees’ dances to determine the distances 
and directions to the nesting sites they had discovered. The cali- 
bration curves of von Frisch (1967) and Lindauer (1971) for Apis 
mellifera ligustica were used to translate dance tempos into dis- 
tances to the advertised nest sites. The dances representing the site 
finally selected by each swarm were easily recognized by the frenzy 
with which they were performed and by their heavy preponderance 
