272 
DIAGNOSING COLONIES 
ing bees. It will not need more room, and 
for the time being can be allowed to take 
care of itself. The other colony, with its 
busy rush of bees going in and out, should 
be opened up. If it has little spurs of wax 
built along the top edges of the comb, if it 
is full of brood, and if, further, storage 
space is being cramped, another super 
should be added. It is possible, if the 
weather is getting hot, that the entrance 
should be enlarged. See Entrances. 
At the same time that the entrances of 
the strong flyers are being observed it is 
advisable to get back of the hives of such 
flyers, and by hefting see whether the hive 
is getting heavy. With a little practice 
one can get a pretty fair idea of the 
amount of honey in the hive by lifting or 
attempting to lift the back end of the hive. 
If the bees are flying strong, and the hive 
seems light, it will, of course, have plenty 
of room for the storage of new honey. But 
if it feels heavy, or too heavy to lift, then, 
of course, room should be given at once. 
In like manner the apiarist should go 
thru the whole apiary, walking down the 
rows, carefully inspecting the entrances, 
and hefting the hives. In five minutes’ 
time he can go thru 100 colonies, laying a 
stick, block, or a small stone as a distin¬ 
guishing' mark on top of the strong fliers 
and heavy hives. All others he will ig¬ 
nore for the time being. He and his men 
will then proceed to examine the indicated 
colonies first. These may use up all extra 
supplies he has brought with him, if it is 
an outyard. Later on, when he has more 
time, he can take care of those that are not 
flying strong to determine whether the 
queen herself is inherently poor or 
whether the colony did not have a fair 
chance at the start on account of insuf¬ 
ficient protection or poor food. If it is a 
nucleus or a late swarm in the fall, no 
matter how much protection it might have, 
it would have insufficient bees to protect 
it. 
At this point the beginner, at least, 
should make a careful distinction between 
the playflights of young bees (see Play- 
Flights) and bees that are rushing to and 
from the fields. In the case of the former 
the bees will be seen flying nervously 
around the entrance, some going in and 
some flying aimlessly around in the air for 
several minutes near the front of the hive. 
When busy at work going to the fields 
they will fly from the entrance directly to 
some distant point, as soon as they rise 
above surrounding objects. In the same 
way they will come in from the field going 
directly into the entrance, or perhaps 
dropping on the alighting-board or ground 
near by if heavily laden. 
Neither must the beginner be confused 
by a case of robbing and bees actually at 
work in the fields. When the colony is 
being robbed out, only one hive, or at most 
two or three, in the apiary will be in¬ 
volved. The sound of robbing is quite dif¬ 
ferent from the sound of actual workers. 
In robbing, the bees stealthily dodge in at 
the entrance as if they expected to be 
grabbed by the defenders of the home. 
Real busy honest workers going to and 
from the fields show no such dodging or 
nervousness. For the behavior of robber 
bees, see Robbing. 
HOW TO DETECT INCLINATION TO SWARM. 
A surface indication of natural swarming 
is a large bunch of bees—three or four 
quarts of them—clustered closely around 
the entrance of the hive during the middle 
hours of the day, with only a few bees 
flying to and from the field. This big 
crowd of bees out in front means nothing 
if the weather is excessively hot and there 
•is no honey flow on at the time. If the 
entrance is small* a powerful colony will 
cluster out in front during very hot weath¬ 
er, and it may do so during a honey flow 
toward night, but not usually during the 
day unless the hive is out in the open ex¬ 
posed to the boiling rays of the sun. In 
that case shade-boards should be applied— 
see shade-boards unde the head of Apiary ; 
and the entrance should be enlarged—see 
Entrances. 
If the colony persists in clustering .out 
in front during the time when other bees 
are actively going to the fields, and not 
many workers going in and out, it may 
indicate that the bees are preparing to 
swarm. An examination of the hive will 
probably show swarming cells more or less 
toward completion. Merely cutting out the 
cells may not prevent swarming. If the 
entrance has not been enlarged, treatment 
should be applied as recommended under 
