TO PREVENT SWARMING.
As yet we can only partly avert swarming. Mr. Quinby offered a large reward for a perfect non-swarming hive, and never had to make the payment. Mr. Hazen attempted it, and partially succeeded, by granting much space to the bees, so that they should not be impelled to vacate for lack of room.' The Quinby hive already described, by the large capability of the brood-chamber, and ample opportunity for top and side-storing, looks to the same end. But we may safely say that a perfect non-swarming hive or system is not yet before the bee-keeping public. The best aids toward non-swarming are shade, ventilation, and roomy hives. But as we shall see in the sequel, much room in the brood-chamber, unless we work for extracted honey—by which means we may greatly repress the swarming fever—prevents our obtaining honey in a desirable style. If we add sections, unless the connection is quite free—in which case the queen is apt to enter them and greatly vex us—we must crowd some to send the bees into the sections. Such crowding is almost sure to lead to swarming. I have, by abrading the combs of capped honey in the brood-chamber, as suggested to me by Mr. M. M. Baldridge—causing the honey to run down from the combs—sent the bees crowding to the sections, and thus deferred or prevented swarming.
It is possible that by extracting freely when storing is very rapid, and then by rapidly feeding the extracted honey in the interims of honey secretion, we might prevent swarming, secure very rapid breeding, and still get our honey in sections. Too few experiments, to be at all decisive, have led me to look favorably in this direction.
The keeping of colonies queenless, in order to secure honey without increase, as practiced and advised by some even of our distinguished apiarists, seems to me a very questionable practice, to which I cannot even lend my approval by so much as detailing the method. I would rather advise: keeping a, queen, and the workers all at work in every hive, if possible, all the time.