266 
Beekeeping 
beauty of a swarm fail to meet a ready response from 
him. To him, swarming is the one great handicap in bee¬ 
keeping. 
The necessity of keeping the bees together cannot be 
overestimated. If a colony is divided just before or during 
the honey-flow, the two parts fail to produce as much sur¬ 
plus honey in that honey-flow as the same bees would if 
they had remained in one colony and in normal condition. 
Furthermore, when bees are preparing to swarm, their con¬ 
dition is not so favorable for gathering. Whether there is 
some physiological difference or whether the lack of concen¬ 
trated effort in gathering is due to an unbalanced condition 
of the colony population is not known, but the results of the 
swarming preparations are shown in a decrease in the crop. 
In successful honey-production, it therefore becomes essen¬ 
tial that every effort be made to reduce and to overcome the 
tendency to swarm. 
Variation in swarming. 
It is interesting to note that, in any region, swarming 
usually occurs at a certain season or seasons and rarely occurs 
throughout the entire active season. It is most common 
in those sections of the North in which the main honey-flow 
occurs in early summer. If there are two heavy honey- 
flows, swarming may occur in connection with each one, al¬ 
though it is usually less troublesome in the later one. The 
crowded condition of the hive in the production of comb- 
honey is favorable for the development of the swarming tend¬ 
ency and, since the early summer flows of the North are 
the best for comb-honey, the control of swarming is most 
difficult in northern comb-honey apiaries. 
That many comb-honey producers crowd their colonies 
more than is necessary or desirable will be shown in a later 
chapter, but, even with the most skillful manipulation of 
the supers and with the proper manipulations throughout, 
there is always more crowding than is necessary in extracted- 
honey production. Swarm control is therefore chiefly a 
