26 
chapman’s handy-book. 
brought into these islands, and left to themselves in a 
protected situation, in a very few years every good 
locality would be inhabited by as many bees as the 
flowers of that district can support. This is now the 
case down North, in the Hokianga, Bay of Islands, and 
Kaipara districts, where the bees have taken to the bush 
and multiplied exceedingly. What I have now to do 
is to speak more particularly about the act of swarming 
itself. 
In September or October, as the season is early or 
late, the bee master must begin to look out for swarms, 
if his stocks are in good condition. There is no sign, as 
far as I know, by which he can tell to a day or so, when 
the first swarm will rise; the after swarms give clearer 
signals. For this reason I said, that the first stock with 
which a bee master begins his apiary should be within 
sight of his door, or else he may chance to lose some of 
his early swarms; and this in the first year of its estab¬ 
lishment will be no trifling loss to him. In after years, 
when he has from forty to fifty parent stocks, he may 
well afford a swarm or two for the department of the 
woods and forests, having, I suppose, by that time fully 
supplied all his private friends. Look at your hive in 
the quiet evening when the work of the day is over: if 
the bees stand about the doorway, fanning with their 
wings, and pleased as it were with the prosperity of 
their large family,—if a pleasant and wholesome smell 
comes steaming from the mouth of the hive—and I 
know no smell so pleasant as that of a healthy beehive, 
unless it be a fine dairy of cows at milking time,—if you 
have seen a number of young bees on the lighting board 
for the last few days, (and you can tell them by their 
being at first covered with a greyish down, and quite 
damp, as they issue from the cell),—if, in fact, all be 
going on well with your hive in the month of October, 
look out for a swarm. Your children, if you are so 
fortunate as to have a fine swarm of them, will soon 
learn to stand sentry over the hives, and will take a 
pleasure in calling by their own names the swarms 
which they have seen rise. 
