78 
Beekeeping 
tion of extracted-honey, in which the bees are provided 
with an abundance of empty combs, swarming is much less 
common than from the contracted and crowded hives con¬ 
sidered necessary for the production of comb-honey. 
Similarly in the “non-swarming hive” devised by L. A. 
Aspinwall, Jackson, Michigan, an abundance of room is 
provided in the brood chamber by the insertion of slatted 
wooden separators between the brood combs. From this 
array of seemingly irreconcilable statements, one thing in 
common may be observed. So far as contraction is con¬ 
cerned, when swarming is less common there is room avail¬ 
able for the young bees which have not yet begun their 
field duties. 
In the preparation of his Farmers’ Bulletin on Comb 
Honey, 1 Demuth makes a careful analysis of the various 
methods employed in the control of swarming, which is so 
important a problem in the production of comb-honey. 
The following quotation from this bulletin gives his con¬ 
clusions: “Any manipulation for swarm control, whether 
applied after the colony has acquired the ‘swarming fever’ 
or applied to all colonies alike previous to the swarming 
season, is based upon a single principle — a temporary dis¬ 
turbance in the continuity of the daily emergence of brood. 
This disturbance should occur just previous to or during 
the swarming season.” While the various methods of 
swarm control are reserved for a later chapter, the funda¬ 
mental principle that there must be a temporary disturbance 
in the continuity of brood emergence, which Demuth was 
the first to point out, is of primary importance in a con¬ 
sideration of the cause of swarming. The methods de¬ 
scribed in Demuth’s bulletin are those which have proved 
reliable in the hands of practical beekeepers throughout 
the United States and yet these methods do not have in 
common 'those things which are called for in considering 
overcrowding, overheating, lack of ventilation or the presence 
1 Demuth, Geo. S., 1912. Comb Honey. Farmers’ Bulletin 503, U. S. 
Dept, of Agric. [see especially pp. 34-35], 
