20 
AGE OF BEES 
and while it is in the air the parent colony 
is removed from its stand and placed a few 
inches to one side, with its entrance point¬ 
ing at right angles to its former position. 
For instance, if the old hive faced the east, 
it will now look toward the north. Another 
hive is placed on the old stand, filled with 
frames of wired foundation. The swarm is 
put in the hive on the old stand, and at the 
end of two days the parent hive is turned 
around so that its entrance points in the 
same direction as the hive that now has the 
swarm. Just as soon as young queens of 
the parent colony are about to emerge, it is 
carried to a new location during the mid¬ 
dle of the day or when the bees are flying- 
thickest. This should be done carefully 
without disturbing the colony, so the bees 
in leaving the hive will not mark the new 
Old hive turned back toward new one after swarm 
' has entered. 
location. Usually this should be done on 
the seventh or eighth day after the prime 
swarm issued. The result is, these flying 
bees will go back to the hive having the 
swarm. This, like the other method de¬ 
scribed, so depletes the parent hive that 
any attempt at after-swarming is effect¬ 
ually forestalled. 
The only reason for turning the en¬ 
trance of the old hive to one side at first 
is to prevent any of the bees entering it 
while the swarm is being hived in the new 
one and until the bees of the new swarm be¬ 
come accustomed to the new order of 
things. In making artificial swarms it is 
not necessary to turn the entrance of the 
old hive away, for in this case there is less 
danger of the bees of the swarm entering 
the old hive. 
AGE OF BEES. —It may be rather diffi¬ 
cult to decide how long a worker bee would 
live if kept from wearing itself out by the 
active labors of the field; six months cer¬ 
tainly, and perhaps a year; but the average 
life during the summer time is not over 
three months, and perhaps during the 
height of the clover bloom not over six or 
eight weeks. The matter is easily deter¬ 
mined by introducing Italian queens to 
hives of black bees at different periods of 
the year. If done in May or June there 
will be all Italians in the fall; and if a 
record is kept when the last black bees 
emerge, and the time when no black bees 
are to be found in the colony, a pretty 
accurate idea of the age of the blacks may 
be secured. The Italians will perhaps hold 
out under the same circumstances a half 
longer. !t the Italian queen be introduced 
in September in the northern States, 
black' bees will be found in the hive until 
the month of May following- — they mav 
disappear a little earlier, or may be found 
