ARTmCIAL SWAHMING. 
14 !> 
rabbets, instead of folding them together like the leaves 
of a book, he would have left much less room for subsc*- 
qiient improveme)its. 
“ Dividing-hives,” of various kinds, have been used in 
this country. The principle seems to have all the ele- 
ineiits of success; and it was only after protracted experi¬ 
ments, that I was able to ascertain that, however modi¬ 
fied, such hives are all practically worthless for purposes 
of artificial swarming. 
It is one of the laws of the hive, that bees which have 
no mature queen, seldom build any cells except such as are 
designed merely for storing honey, and are too large for 
the rearing of loorkers. Until my perusal of Mr. Wag¬ 
ner’s manuscript translation of Dzierzon, I thought that 
I was the only observer who had noticed the bearing of 
this remarkable fact on artificial swarming. It may, at 
first, seem unaccountable that bees should build only comb 
unfit for breeding, when their young queen will so soon 
require worker-cells for her eggs; but it must be borne in 
mind, that at such times they are in .an “ abnormal," or 
unn.atural condition. In a state of nature, they seldom 
swarm until their hive is full of comb; or if they do, their 
numbers are so reduced, that they are rarely able to re¬ 
sume comb-building, until the young queen has hatched. 
Tile determination of bees having no mature queen, to 
build comb designed only for storing honey, and unfit for 
rearing workers, shows very clearly the folly of attemptr 
mg to multiiily colonies by dividing-hives. Even if the 
-4piarian succeeds in dividing a colony, so that the queen¬ 
less part proceeds to supjily her loss, if it has bees enough 
to build sufficient new comb to make it of .any value, it 
■'vill build such as is designed only for storing honey; using, 
chielly for breeding purposes, the half of the hive contain- 
U'g the old comb. The next year, if this hive is divided. 
