Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper's Manual — 16 - Ch. 10 (2) Artificial Swarming, part 4

The unwillingness of a swarm of bees, which has been deprived of its queen, to receive another, until after some time has elapsed, must always be borne in mind, by those who have anything to do with making artificial swarms.

About 24 hours must elapse before it will be safe to introduce a strange mother into a queenless hive; and even then, if she is not fertile, she will run a great risk of being destroyed.

To prevent such losses, I adopt the German plan of confining the queen, in what they call, "a queen cage."

A small hole, about as large as a thimble, may be gouged out of a block, and covered over with wire gauze, or any other kind of perforated cover, so that when the queen is put in, the bees cannot enter to destroy her.

Before long, they will cultivate an acquaintance, by thrusting their antennæ through to her; so that, when she is liberated the next day, they will gladly adopt her in place of the one they have lost.

If a hole large enough for her to creep out, is closed with wax, they will gnaw the wax away, and liberate her themselves, from her confinement.

Queens that seem bent on departing to the woods, may be confined in the same way, until the colony has given up all thoughts of forsaking its hive.

A small paste-board box with suitable holes, or a wooden match-box thoroughly scalded, I have found to answer a very good purpose.

I shall here describe what may be called a _Queen Nursery_ which I have contrived to aid those who are engaged in the rapid multiplication of colonies by artificial means.

A solid block about an inch and a quarter thick, is substituted for one of my frames; holes, about one and a half inches in diameter, are bored through it, and covered on both sides, with gauze wire slides; the wire ought to be such as will allow a common bee to pass through, but should be too small to permit a queen to do the same.

Any kind of perforated cover may be made to answer the same purpose as the gauze wire.

If a number of sealed queens are on hand, and there is danger that some may hatch, and destroy the others, before the Apiarian can make use of them in forming artificial swarms, he may very carefully cut out the combs containing them, and place them each in a separate cradle!

The bees having access to them, will give them proper attention, and as soon as they are hatched, will supply them with food, and thus they will always be on hand for use when they are needed.

This Nursery must of course, be established in a hive which has no mature queen, or it will quickly be transformed into a slaughter house by the bees.

I have not yet tested this plan so thoroughly as to be _certain_ that it will succeed; and I know so well the immense difference between theoretical conjectures and practical results, that I consider nothing in the bee line, or indeed in any other line, as established, until it has been submitted to the most rigorous demonstrations, and has triumphantly passed from the mere regions of the brain to those of actual fact.

A theory on any subject may seem so plausible as almost to amount to a positive demonstration, and yet when put to the working test, it is often found to be encumbered by some unforeseen difficulty, which speedily convinces even its sanguine projector, that it has no practical value.

Nine things out of ten may work to a charm, and yet the tenth may be so connected with the other nine, that its failure renders their success of no account.

When I first used this Nursery, I did not give the bees access to it, and I found that the queens were not properly developed, and died in their cells.

Perhaps they did not receive sufficient warmth, or were not treated in some other important respects, as they would have been if left under the care of the bees.

In the multiplicity of my experiments, I did not repeat this one under a sufficient variety of circumstances, to ascertain the precise cause of failure; nor have I as yet, tried whether it will answer perfectly, by admitting the bees to the queen cells.

Last Spring, I made one queen supply several hives with eggs, so as to keep them strong in numbers while they were constantly engaged in rearing a large number of spare queens.

Two hives which I shall call A and B, were deprived at intervals of a week, each of its queen,[20] in order to induce them to raise a number of young sealed queens for the use of the Apiary.

As soon as the queens in A, were of an age suitable to be removed, I took them away and gave the colony a fertile queen from another hive, C; as soon as she had laid a large number of eggs in the empty cells, I removed the queen cells now sealed over, from B, and gave them the loan of this fertile mother, until she had performed the same necessary office for them.

By this time, the queen cells in C, were sealed over; these were now removed, and the queen restored; she had thus made one circuit, and laid a very large number of eggs in the two hives which were first deprived of their queens.

After allowing her to replenish her own hive with eggs, I sent her out again on her perambulating mission, and by this new device was able to get an extraordinary number of young queens from the three hives, and at the same time to preserve their numbers from seriously diminishing.

Two queens may in this way, be made in six hives to furnish all the supernumerary queens which will be wanted in quite a large Apiary.

It will be perfectly obvious to every intelligent and ingenious Apiarian, that the perfect control of the comb, is the _soul_ of an entirely new system of practical management, and that it may be modified to suit the wants of all who wish to cultivate bees.

Even the advocate of the old fashioned plan of killing the bees, can with one of my hives, destroy his faithful laborers, by shaking them into a tub of water, almost, if not quite as speedily as by setting them over a sulphur pit;

while after the work of death is accomplished, his honey will be free from disgusting fumes, and all the labor of cutting it out of the hive, may be dispensed with.

I am now prepared to answer an objection which doubtless has been present in the minds of many, all the time that they have been reading the various processes on which I rely for the multiplication of colonies.

A very large number of persons who keep bees, or who wish to keep them, are so much afraid of them that they object entirely even to natural swarming, because they are in danger of being stung in the process of hiving the bees.

How are such persons to manage bees on my plan, which seems like bearding a lion in its very den!

The truth is that some persons are so very timid, or suffer so dreadfully from the sting of a bee, that they are every way disqualified from having anything to do with them, and ought either to have no bees upon their premises, or to entrust the care of them to some suitable person.

By managing bees according to the directions furnished in this treatise, almost any one can learn, by using a bee-dress, to superintend them, with very little risk; while those who are favorites with them, may dispense entirely with any protection.

I find in short, that the risk of being stung is really diminished by the use of my hives; although it will be hard to convince those who have not seen them in use, that this can be so.

There is still another class who either keep bees or can be induced to keep them, and who are anxiously inquiring for some new hive or new plan by which, with little or no trouble, they may reap copious harvests of the precious nectar.

This is emphatically _the_ class to seize hold of every new device, and waste their time and money to fill the coffers of the ignorant or unprincipled.

There never will be a "royal road" to profitable bee-keeping.

If there is any branch of rural economy which more than all others demands care and experience, for its profitable management, it is the keeping of bees; and those who have a painful consciousness that the disposition to put off and neglect, was, so to speak, born in them, and has never been got out of them, will do well to let bees alone, unless they hope, by the study of their systematic industry, to reform evil habits which are well nigh incurable.

While I feel very sanguine that my system of management will be used extensively and very advantageously, by careful and skillful Apiarians, I know too much of the world to expect that it will, with the masses, very speedily supercede other methods, even if it were so absolutely perfect, as to admit of no possible improvement.

I hope, however, that I may, without being charged with presumption, be permitted to put on record the prediction, that _movable frames_ will in due season, be almost universally employed; and this, whether bees are allowed to swarm naturally, or are increased by artificial means, or are kept in hives in which they are not expected to swarm at all.

NOTE.

--The very day on which I first contrived the plan, so perfectly simple, and yet so efficacious, of gaining the control of the combs by these frames, I not only foresaw all the consequences which would follow their adoption, but wrote as follows, in my Bee-Journal.

"The use of these frames will, I am persuaded, give a new impulse to the easy and profitable management of bees; and will render the making of artificial swarms an easy operation."

FOOTNOTES:

[17] I have often spent more than ten minutes in opening and shutting a single frame in the Huber hive, and even then, have sometimes crushed some of the bees.

[18] The scent of the hives, during the height of the gathering season, will usually inform us from what sources the bees have gathered their supplies.

[19] If they cannot obtain it, the Apiarian must himself furnish it.

[20] The queens taken from such hives may be advantageously used in forming artificial colonies.