1977] 
Seeley & Morse — Honey Bee Swarms 
205 
Table 1. Outcomes of five choices by honey bee swarms between near and far 
nestboxes. 
Trial 
Nestbox 
Near Swarm 
Nestbox 
Chosen 
Distance to 
Selected Nestbox (m) 
1 
1 
1 
20 
2 
2 
2 
20 
3 
1 
1 
20 
4 
2 
2 
20 
5 
1 
2 
400 
We prevented swarms from occupying the nestboxes by keeping 
each swarm’s queen caged on the wooden cross in a standard 
queen mailing cage. Every swarm’s attempt to move to a nestbox 
ended with its return to the caged queen. But even though swarms 
never occupied the nestboxes, their nestbox preferences were al- 
ways clearly indicated by large differences in the number of dances 
for and scouts at the two nestboxes. 
The outcomes of five swarms’ selections of a nest site are shown 
in Table 1. Apparently the nestboxes 1 and 2 were well matched, 
because with 2 and 3 selections respectively, no significant prefer- 
ence for either nestbox was shown. More important was the pat- 
tern of choice between near and far nestboxes: 4 to 1, respectively. 
The estimated probability of a swarm choosing the near nestbox is 
0.80 and the 95% confidence limits on this probability are 0.48 and 
0.95. Thus these results do not support the hypothesis that swarms 
prefer distant nest sites. Instead, they suggest that swarms prefer 
nearby nest sites. Unfortunately, because of lack of time, we were 
unable to perform further trials of this experiment. 
The one selection of the distant nest site may not even be a valid 
test result. For in the fifth trial the swarm’s choice between the 
nestboxes proceeded differently than with the previous four swarms. 
As is shown in Fig. 3, this swarm’s preference developed initially in 
favor of the near nestbox and reached a point at which we expected 
the swarm to lift off and attempt moving to the near nestbox. Then 
suddenly the situation reversed. The scouts decreased at the near 
nestbox and increased at the far nestbox. Finally the swarm lifted 
off and flew past the near nestbox en route to the far nestbox. In 
the previous four trials, each swarm’s preference between nestboxes 
