ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 
15i 
by dividing the old hive, the queenless part has thousands 
of cells filled with brood and eggs, and yoing bees will be 
hatching for at least three weeks : by this time, the young 
queen will ordinarily be laying eggs, so that there will be 
an interval of not more than three weeks, during which 
the colony will receive no accessions. But when a new 
swarm is tbrmed, in the way above described, not an egg 
will be laid for nearly three weeks, and not a bee hatched 
for nearly six. During all this time, the colony will 
rapidly decrease ;* and by the time the progeny of the 
young queen begins to mature, the new hive will have so 
few bees, that it would seldom be of any value, even if 
its combs were of the best construction. 
After thoroughly testing this last plan of artificial 
swarming, I have found that it has not the least practical 
value; and as this is the method which Apiaiians have 
usually tried, it is not strange that hitherto, they have 
almost unanimously condemned artificial swarming. 
Another method of artificial swarming has been zeal¬ 
ously advocated, which, seeming to require the smallest 
amount of labor or skill, would be everywhere practiced, 
if it could only be made effectual. A number of hives are 
to be connected by holes, so as to allow the bees to travel 
from any one to all the others. The bees, on this plan, are 
to colonize themselves , and it is asserted that in due time, 
edge with worker-cells, for the accommodation of the young queen. So uniformly 
do bees with an unhatched queen build coarse, or drone-coinb, that often a 
glance at the combs of a new colony, will show either that it is quecnloss, or that, 
having been so, it has just reared a new queen. It is not necessary that a queen 
should have commenced laying eggs to induce her colony to build worker-cells; I 
have known a strong swarm with a virgin queen, almost to fill their hive with 
beautiful worker-comb, before a single egg was deposited in tho colls. 
* Every observing bee-koepor must have noticed how rapidly even a largo 
swarm diminishes in number, for tho first three weeks after it has been hived, 
bo great Is the mortality of bees during tho height of tho working-season, that 
oftou, in l«‘ss than that time, it does not contain one half Its original number. 
