MANAGEMENT OF HONEY-BEES.—NO. 10 . 
212 
hiving is the best, and when brushing the bees off| 
is resorted to, where they cannot be dislodged in 
any other way it should be done in a careful man¬ 
ner lest the queen should be injured. The time 
that bees remain in the cluster before departing, 
when not hived, is difficult to determine. I have 
always hived mine in the course of half an hour 
after clustering, except two swarms that came off 
late last season at 10 o’clock, A. M., when I was 
absent from home, and there was no person on the 
premises to attend to them. They remained quietly 
till 2 P. M., when a violent thunder-shower came 
up, the wind blowing a gale which lasted till 4 
o’clock ; I then came home and found them safe ; 
not a bee had been lost from the cluster as far as I 
could see. From this it appears that there is no 
need of great haste in hiving. The bees when 
hived, should be protected from the sun when very 
hot, so they cannot suffer as much exposure to heat 
at such a time as when the hive is filled with comb. 
A bag or blanket thrown over the hive will answer 
the purpose. Speaking of the time that bees re¬ 
main in the cluster—there are many instances in 
which they have commenced comb-building upon 
the bough clustered upon, and have remained and 
perished upon the spot; and I presume that half 
the swarms that issue would do the same, if left to 
themselves. 
As soon as the bees are quietly hived, many of 
the workers will immediately sally out to the fields- 
and return laden with honey, or materials for comb¬ 
building. Should there be no going forth and re¬ 
turning, you may depend upon something being 
wrong. Either the queen has been lost in hiving, 
or the bees meditate a removal. 
Artificial Swarming .—The philosophy of this, 
as already stated, lies in the power of the bees to 
create a queen at pleasure from the young brood 
This is a highly important discovery, by it we 
are enabled to counteract the effects of a lack of 
young sovereigns to issue with swarms. There are 
two modes of artificial swarming; one by division 
the other by separation. The method of dividing is by 
constructing hives in two equal parts, to come to¬ 
gether perpendicularly, and fasten with hooks. 
These hives must be made very exact, in order to 
have the different parts all fit each other. To 
illustrate this matter, we will take a couple of halves 
and fit them together, and hive a swarm in it; but 
before this is done, something should be done to 
cause the bees to construct their combs the same 
way that the hive divides, and this can be effected 
by attaching a small piece of comb to the top of 
the hive, inside, running as you desire it. A little 
bees-wax melted and traced along as you desire the 
comb to run, will be followed by the bees. The 
reason of having the comb run from front to back, 
is, that in separating the two parts, the combs would 
have to be cut, if they run transversely, which could 
not be easily done. A very thin partition should 
be placed at the top, middle, and bottom of one-half 
only, say two inches wide. This will prevent the 
bees from working a comb directly upon the divid¬ 
ing line, and when the halves are separated, they 
will open between the combs without injury. Well, 
we have a hive on this plan, wintered over, and 
ready to swarm, or at least, have bees enough to 
throw off one, and perhaps they are prevented, from 
| one of the causes before stated. Without artificial 
means, this stock will remain the entire season, 
with half a peck of idle bees clustering upon its 
sides, that neither work nor let others work, by 
stopping up the passage. We now take the hive 
apart quickly, and to each half attach a correspond¬ 
ing empty half, and let the two hives stand as 
near the position of the original one as possible, by 
moving one to the right just as far as the other is 
removed to the left, and stand about a foot asunder. 
In the course of 24 hours, w r e can generally ascer¬ 
tain in which the queen is, from the bees gathering 
more to one hive than to the other, and this seen, 
we will remove that hive in which the queen is to 
a new location, and then place the other in the pre¬ 
cise location of the hive before dividing. We shall 
now have two good swarms, each better than the 
old stock, encumbered as it was with a useless 
mass of bees, that could not labor for want of room. 
Another method, is, to cut a piece of comb from 
any hive that we can the most readily get at. If 
we have no division-hives we must turn up a hive 
and cut it out from below. I have a hive that ad¬ 
mits the side to be taken off. I never could wade 
through the solid masses of bees in my hives to get 
comb from the bottom. This is a job that must not 
be done by a novice in such things, where the 
stocks are so powerful as mine are. Having cut 
out a piece 2 inches square, or more, containing the 
young brood, I take a hive and attach it therein, the 
same distance from the side as the bees construct 
tlieir combs. I melt a few ounces of bees-wax in 
a shallow vessel, and -while warm, I dip the comb 
into it (having first smoothed and squared the 
edges on a hot smoothing-iron), and then as quickly 
as possible, apply it to its location, and I soon fas¬ 
ten it as firmly as if built there by the bees. My 
next operation is to remove such a hive, as I wish to 
take my swarm from, to a new location, and place 
my hive with the piece of comb in its place. This 
operation should be in a fair day, about 11 o’clock, 
A. M. The bees on returning home go directly to 
the hive, and find to their surprise an empty one in 
the place of the one they left full. Their old hive 
they cannot find-if removed 10 feet, and by evening 
we have a good-sized swarm that are compelled to 
take quarters in the new hive. The second and 
third days after the removal will continue to add to 
the empty hive, and the bees, finding the material to 
make a queen from, cluster around the comb, and 
in a short time they are in as good condition as if 
they had swarmed by natural means. The old hive 
is released from a useless hindrance to their labors, 
and both'thrive well. Here we have the necessity 
of placing the hives so as to be easily removed from 
one location to another. 
It appears that the new. queen can only be pro¬ 
duced from gruBs of a certain age, and if we hap¬ 
pen to get none of the right kind, we shall have a 
failure; but in three cases out of four, we shall 
succeed, unless a storm should arise soon after per¬ 
forming the operation, which would prevent the 
bees from going abroad, and consequently the new 
hive would not receive sufficient bees to keep the 
young brood warm, and a failure must ensue, as the 
bees would not stay an hour after their hopes are 
blasted in this way. T. *B. Miner. 
Raven wood, L. I., May , 1847, 
