ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 
177 
honey-harvest will pass away, and the bees be able to ob- 
tain very little from it. During all this time of meagre 
accumulations, the orchards may present 
4< One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower 
Of mingled blossoms J 
and tens of thousands of bees from stronger stocks may 
be engaged all day in sipping the fragrant sweets, so that 
every gale which “ fans its odoriferous wings ” about 
their dwellings, dispenses 
“ Native perfumes, and whispers whence they stole 
Those balmy spoils.”* 
By the time the feeble stock is prepared — if at all — to 
swarm, the honey-harvest is almost over, and the new 
colony, instead of gathering enough for its own use, may 
starve, unless fed. Bee-keeping, with colonies which are 
feeble in the Spring, except in extraordinary seasons and 
locations, is emphatically nothing but “ folly and vexation 
of spirit.” 
I have shown how a handsome profit may, in a favorable 
season, be realized from a strong stock, which has swarmed 
early, and but once. If the parent-stock throws a second 
swarm, unless it issues early, and the honey-season is good, 
it will seldom prove of any value, if managed on the ordi- 
nary plan. It usually perishes in the Winter, unless pro 
viously destroyed, and the parent-stock will not only 
gather no surplus honey — unless it was secured before the 
first swarm issued — but will often perish also. Thus the 
novice who was so delighted with the rapid increase of 
his colonies, begins the next season with no more than he 
had the previous year, and with the entire loss of all the 
time bestowed upon his bees. 
• The Bcont of the hives, during the height of the gathering season, usually 
indicates from what sources the bees hove gathered their supplies, 
8 * 
