WHEN TO EXPECT SWARMS. 
55 
which of course do not exist at first swarming. If any one 
doubts whether the old queen leaves with the first swarm, all 
he has to do to conviuce himself of the fact, if he has a 
movable comb hive, is to open it after they have swarmed, 
and he will never be able lo find a hatched queen in the hive. 
The absence of eggs in the hive from four to fifteen days or 
more after the swarm has left is evidence that there is no 
queen there to lay them. 
One man tells me he cropped the wing of a young queen 
when hiving a swarm. The next season the bees forced this 
cropped winged queen out with the swarm. lie supposed 
they had some antipathy towards her, aud he was provoked 
at his bees, that for five years in succession they forced out 
this cropped winged queen with the top swarm. Another 
Virginia bee-keeper is sure he can convince me that it is not 
the old but a young queen that leaves with the swarm, by the 
fact that he cropped the wing of a queen that had 
dropped on the ground in swarming, and then put her with 
the swarm. The next season he watched this swarm closely, 
and the queen that came off with the first swarm was a young 
one with perfect wings. “How could I overthrow that argu- 
ment?” I remarked, “that all queens die sometime. The 
fact that his queen dropped on the ground last season was 
evidpnee that she was then old.” 
It is said that when a queen begins to manifest infirmness, 
the bees to prevent the danger of her dying and leaving 
them without eggs or queen, start young ones and then de- 
stroy the old one. This is most probably true. But be this 
as it may, all queens die within from three to five years, or at 
most six, and new queens are reared. 
This Virginian’s cropped queen had died. They had 
reared another, and she, the eldest one, and the only one in 
the hive, came with the swarm. 
Some feel sure it is the old queen leaves with the first 
swarms, as they have often noticed them so imperfect that 
they dropped down and could not fly. I can easily imagine 
how a decrepit old queen, burdened with thousands of eggs 
would be equally as clumsy as the young unfertilized one. 
The Virginian to whom I have referred, also attempted to 
prove to me that bees live for several years, by the fact that 
a swarm of bees had been clustered where ho could not re- 
move them all at once, aud removing them by passing a long 
