The Cycle of the Year 
61 
ment within the brood nest during brood-rearing, the de¬ 
velopmental stages are practically uniform in length of time. 
This is a great benefit to the beekeeper, especially in timing 
swarming and similar phenomena where queen cells are 
concerned. It has been found that if brood is removed and 
kept at a temperature lower than is usual in the brood-cham¬ 
ber, development continues but, as with other insects, it is 
retarded. 
One other point regarding the hive temperature is impor¬ 
tant. The temperature is not uniform throughout the hive 
but may vary over many degrees in cold weather. This will 
be explained in greater detail under a discussion of bees 
during winter. In any weather, however, the efforts of the 
bees in heat generation are confined to the brood nest or, in 
the absence of brood, to the cluster, except when wax is 
being secreted, when a high temperature is also maintained 
at the point of building. Away from the centers of activity, 
however, the temperature is not raised except by chance 
muscular movements or by convection currents, but may be 
cooled if it is too hot. This perhaps explains the seemingly 
unreconcilable records of hive temperatures during the 
summer. 
SWARMING 
Continued and increased breeding, previously described 
as occurring in early summer, would result in enormous 
colonies if the queen were able to lay eggs with sufficient 
rapidity to meet the demands of such a case. It would not, 
however, result in any increase in the number of colonies. 
Obviously, it frequently happens that an entire colony of 
bees is destroyed, in Nature as well as in the hands of the 
beekeeper, and the very existence of the species depends on 
another method of reproduction. The colony life of the bee 
is so completely developed that it is permissible to think of 
the individuals as merely “winged organs of the colony,” as 
Maeterlinck has expressed it. We now come to the breed¬ 
ing of colonies or swarming. This process of reproduc- 
