Part 12 (1/2)
If the bees settle too high to be easily reached, the basket should be fastened to a pole, and raised directly under the swarm; a quick motion of the basket will cause the ma.s.s of the bees to fall into it, when it may be carried to the hive, and the bees poured out from it on the sheet.
If the bees light on the trunk of a tree, or any thing from which they cannot easily be gathered in a basket, place a leafy bough over them, (it may be fastened with a gimlet,) and if they do not mount it of their own accord, a little smoke will compel them to do so. If the place is inaccessible, and this is about the worst case that occurs, they will enter a basket well shaded by cotton cloth fastened around it, and elevated so as to rest with its open top sideways to the ma.s.s of the bees. When small trees, or limbs fastened into the ground, are placed near the hives, and there are no large trees near, there will seldom be found any difficulty in hiving swarms. If two swarms light together, I advise that they should be put into one hive, and abundant room at once be given them, for storing surplus honey. This can always be readily done in my hives. Large quant.i.ties of honey are generally obtained from such stocks, if the season is favorable, and they have issued early. If it is desired to separate them, place in each of the hives which is to receive them, a comb containing brood and eggs, from which, in case of necessity, a new queen may be raised. Shake a portion of the bees in front of each hive, sprinkling them thoroughly, both before and after they are shaken out from the basket, so that they will not take wing to unite again. If possible, secure the queens, so that one may be given to each hive. If this cannot be done, the hives should be examined the next day, and if the two queens entered the same hive, one will have killed the other, and the queenless hive will be found building royal cells. It should be supplied with a sealed queen nearly mature, taken from another hive, not only to save time, but to prevent them from filling their hive with comb unfit for the rearing of workers. (See Artificial Swarming.) Of course, this cannot be done with the common hives, and if the Apiarian does not succeed in getting a queen for each hive, the queenless one will refuse to stay, and will go back to the old stock.
The old-fas.h.i.+oned way of hiving bees, by mounting trees, cutting and lowering down large limbs, (often to the injury of valuable trees,) and placing the hive over the bees, frequently crus.h.i.+ng large numbers, and endangering the life of the queen, should be entirely abandoned. A swarm may be hived in the proper way with far less risk and trouble, and in much less time. In large Apiaries managed on the swarming plan, where a number of swarms come out on the same day, and there is constant danger of their mixing,[16] the speedy hiving of swarms is an object of great importance. If the new hive does not stand where it is to remain for the season, it should be removed to its permanent stand as soon as the bees have entered; for if allowed to remain to be removed in the evening, or early next morning, the scouts which have left the cl.u.s.ter, in search of a hollow tree, will find the bees when they return, and will often entice them from the hive. There is the greater danger of this, if the bees have remained on the tree, a considerable time before they were hived. I have invariably found that swarms which abandon a suitable hive for the woods, have been hived near the spot where they cl.u.s.tered, and allowed to remain to be moved in the evening. If the bees swarm early in the day, they will generally begin to work in a few hours (or in less time, if they have empty comb,) and many more may be lost by returning next day to the place where they were hived, than would be lost, by removing them as soon as they have entered; in this latter case, the few that are on the wing, will generally be able to find the hive if it is slowly moved to its permanent stand.
If the Apiarian wishes to secure the queen, the bees should be shaken from the hiving basket, about a foot from the entrance to the hive, and if a careful look-out is kept, she will generally be seen as she pa.s.ses over the sheet, to the entrance. Care must be taken to brush the bees back from the entrance when they press forward in such dense ma.s.ses that the queen is likely to enter unnoticed. An experienced eye readily catches a glance of her peculiar form and color. She may be taken up without danger, as she never stings, unless engaged in combat with another queen. As it will sometimes happen, even to careful bee-keepers, that swarms will come off when no suitable hives are in readiness to receive them, I shall show what may be done in such an emergency. Take any old hive, box, cask, or measure, and hive the bees in it, placing them with suitable protection against the sun, where their new hive is to stand; when this is ready, they may, by a quick jerking motion, be easily shaken out on a sheet, and hived in it, just as though they were shaken from the hiving basket. If they are to remain in the temporary hive over the second day, they ought to be shaken out on a sheet, and after their comb is taken from them, allowed to enter it again, or else there will be danger of crus.h.i.+ng the queen by the weight of the comb.
I have endeavored, even at the risk of being tedious, to give such specific directions as will qualify the novice to hive a swarm of bees, under almost any circ.u.mstances; for I know the necessity of such directions and how seldom they are to be met with, even in large treatises on Bee-Keeping. Vague or imperfect directions always fail, just at the moment that the inexperienced attempt to put them into practice.
Before leaving this subject, I will add to the directions for hiving already given, a method which I have practiced with good success.
When the situation of the bees does not admit of the basket being easily elevated to them, the bee-keeper may carry it with him to the cl.u.s.ter, and then after shaking the bees into it, may lower it down by a string, to an a.s.sistant standing below.
That Natural Swarming may, with suitable hives, be made highly profitable, I cannot for a moment question. As it is the most simple and obvious way of multiplying colonies, and the one which requires the least amount of knowledge or skill, it will undoubtedly, for many years at least, be the favorite method with a large number of bee-keepers. I have therefore, been careful to furnish suitable directions for its successful practice; and before I discuss the question of Artificial Increase, I shall show how it may be more profitably conducted than ever before; many of the most embarra.s.sing difficulties in the way of its successful management being readily obviated by the use of my hives.
1. The common hives fail to furnish adequate protection in Winter, against cold, and those sudden changes to unseasonable warmth, by which bees are tempted to come out and perish in large numbers on the snow; and the colonies are thus prevented from breeding on a large scale, as early as they otherwise would. Under such circ.u.mstances, they can make no profitable use of the early honey-harvest; and they will swarm so late, if they swarm at all, as to have but little opportunity for laying up surplus honey, while often they do not gather enough even for their own use, and their owner closes the season by purchasing honey to preserve them from starvation. The way in which I give the bees that amount of protection in Winter, which conduces most powerfully to early swarming, has already been described in the Chapter on Protection.
2. Another serious objection to all the ordinary swarming hives, is the vexatious fact that if the bees swarm at all, they are liable to swarm so often as to destroy the value of both the parent stock and the after-swarms. Experienced bee-keepers obviate this difficulty, by uniting second swarms, so as to make one good colony out of two; and they return to the parent stock all swarms after the second, and even this if the season is far advanced. Such operations consume much time, and often give much more trouble than they are worth. By removing all the queen cells but one, after the first swarm has left, second swarming in my hives will always be prevented; and by removing all but two, provision may be made for the issue of second swarms, and yet all after-swarming be prevented. The process of returning after-swarms is not only objectionable, on account of the time it requires, having often to be repeated again and again before one queen is allowed to destroy the others; but it also causes a large portion of the gathering season to be wasted; for the bees seem unwilling to work with energy, so long as the pretensions of several rival queens are unsettled.
3. Another very serious objection to Natural Swarming, as practiced with the common hives, is the inability of the Apiarian who wishes rapidly to multiply his colonies, to aid his late and small swarms, so as to build them up into vigorous stocks. The time and money which are ordinarily spent upon small colonies, are almost always thrown away; by far the larger portion of them never survive the Winter, and the majority of those that do, are so enfeebled, as to be of little or no value. If they escape being robbed by stronger stocks, or destroyed by the moth, they seldom recruit in season to swarm, and very often the feeding must be repeated, the second Fall, or they will at last perish. I doubt not that many of my readers will, from their own experience, endorse every word of these remarks, as true to the very letter. All who have ever attempted to multiply colonies by nursing and feeding small swarms, on the ordinary plans, have found it attended with nothing but loss and vexation. The more a man has of such stocks, the poorer he is: for by their weakness, they are constantly tempting his strong swarms to evil courses; so that at last, they prefer to live as far as they can, by stealing, rather than by habits of honest industry; and if the feeble colonies escape being plundered, they often become mere nurseries for raising a plentiful supply of moths, to ravage his whole Apiary.
I have already shown, in what way by the use of my hives, the smallest swarms that ever issue, may be so managed as to become powerful stocks.
In the same way the Apiarian can easily strengthen all his colonies which are feeble in Spring.
4. As the loss of the young queens in the parent stock after it has swarmed, and in the after-swarms, is a very common occurrence, a hive which like mine, furnishes the means of easily remedying this misfortune, will greatly promote the success of those who practice natural swarming. A very intelligent bee-keeper once a.s.sured me, that he must use at least one such hive in his Apiary, for this purpose, even if in other respects it possessed no superior merits.
5. Bees, as is well known, often refuse to swarm at all, and most of the swarming hives are so constructed, that proper accommodations for storing honey, cannot be furnished to the super-abundant population.
Under such circ.u.mstances, they often hang for several months, in black ma.s.ses on the outside of the hive; and are worse than useless, as they consume the honey which the others have gathered. In my hives, an abundance of room for storing honey can always be given them, _not all at once_, so as to prevent them from swarming, but by degrees, as their necessities require: so that if they are indisposed, for any reason to swarm, they may have suitable receptacles easily accessible, and furnished with guide comb to make them more attractive, in which to store up any amount of honey that they can possibly collect.
6. In the common hives, but little can be done to dislodge the bee-moth, when once it has gained the mastery of the bees; whereas in mine, it can be most effectually rooted out when it has made a lodgment. (See Remarks on Bee-Moth.)
7. In the common hives, nothing can be done except with great difficulty, to remove the old queen when her fertility is impaired; whereas in my hives, (as will be shown in the Chapter on Artificial Swarming,) this can easily be effected, so that an Apiary may constantly contain a stock of young queens, in the full vigor of their re-productive powers.
I trust that these remarks will convince intelligent Apiarians, that I have not spoken boastfully or at random, in a.s.serting that natural swarming can be carried on with much greater certainty and success, by the use of my hives, than in any other way; and that they will see that many of the most perplexing embarra.s.sments and mortifying discouragements under which they have hitherto prosecuted it, may be effectually remedied.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Dr. Scudamore, an English physician who has written a small tract on the formation of artificial swarms, says that he once knew ”as many as ten swarms go forth at once, and settle and mingle together, forming literally a monster meeting!” Instances are on record of a much larger number of swarms cl.u.s.tering together. A venerable clergyman, in Western Ma.s.sachusetts, related to me the following remarkable occurrence. In the Apiary of one of his paris.h.i.+oners, five swarms lit in one ma.s.s. As there was no hive which would hold them, a very large box was roughly nailed together, and the bees were hived in it. They were taken up by sulphur in the Fall, when it was perfectly evident that the five swarms had occupied the same box as independent colonies. Four of them had commenced their works, each one near a corner, and the fifth one in the middle, and there was a distinct interval separating the works of the different colonies. In Cotton's ”My Bee Book,” there is a cut ill.u.s.trating a hive in which two colonies had built in the same manner.
CHAPTER X.
ARTIFICIAL SWARMING.
The numerous efforts which have been made for the last fifty years or more, to dispense with natural swarming, plainly indicate the anxiety of Apiarians to find some better mode of increasing their colonies.
Although I am able to propagate bees by natural swarming, with a rapidity and certainty unattainable except by the complete control of all the combs in the hive, still there are difficulties in this mode of increase, inherent to the system itself, and therefore entirely incapable of being removed by any kind of hive. Before describing the various methods which I employ to increase colonies by artificial means, I shall first enumerate these difficulties, in order that each individual bee-keeper may decide for himself, in which way he can most advantageously propagate his bees.
1. The large number of swarms lost every year, is a powerful argument against natural swarming.