The removal of a queen at the opening of the swarming season interferes, of course, with the plans of the bees, and they will then delay swarming until they get a young queen. Then if the bee keeper destroys all queen cells before the tenth day, swarming will again be checked. But to prevent swarming by keeping colonies queenless longer than a few days at most is to attain a certain desired result at a disproportionate cost, for the bees will not store diligently when first made queenless, and the whole yield of honey, especially if the flow is extended over some time or other yields come later in the season, is likely, or even nearly sure, to be less from such colonies, while the interruption to brood rearing may decimate the colony and prove very disastrous to it. The plan is therefore not to be commended.
REQUEENING.
Quite the opposite of this, and more efficacious in the prevention of swarming, is the practice of replacing the old queen early in the season with a young one of the same season's raising, produced, perhaps, in the South before it is possible to rear queens in the North. Such queens are not likely to swarm during the first season, and as they are vigorous layers the hive will be well populated at all times and thus ready for any harvest. This is important inasmuch as a flow of honey may come unexpectedly from some plant ordinarily not counted upon, and also since the conditions essential to the development of the various honey-yielding plants differ greatly, their time and succession of honey yield will also differ with the season, the same as the quantity may vary. Young queens are also safest to head the colonies for the winter. The plan is conducive to the highest prosperity of the colonies and is consistent with the securing of the largest average yield of honey, since besides giving them vigorous layers it generally keeps the population together in powerful colonies. It is therefore to be commended on all accounts as being in line with the most progressive management, without at the same time interfering with the application of other preventive measures.
Fig. 68.—The Simmins non-swarming system—single-story hive with supers: bc, brood chamber; sc, super; st, starters of foundation; c, entrance. (Redrawn from A Modern Bee-Farm.)
SPACE NEAR ENTRANCES.
Fig. 69.—The Simmins non-swarming system—double-story hive with supers; bc, brood chamber; sc, supers; st, chamber with starters; e, entrance. (Redrawn from A Modern Bee Farm.)
Arranging frames with starters or combs merely begun between the brood nest and the flight hole of the hive while the bees are given storing space above or back of the brood-nest (figs. [68] and [69]) La a plan strongly recommended by Mr. Samuel Simmins, of England, and which has come to be known as "the Simmins non-swarming method," some features of it and the combination into a well defined method having been original with him. It is an excellent preventive measure, though not invariably successful even when the distinctive features brought forward prominently by Mr. Simmins—empty space between the brood combs and entrance, together with the employment of drawn combs in the supers—are supplemented by other measures already mentioned; but when, in addition to the space between the brood and the flight hole, the precaution be taken to get supers on in time, to ventilate the hive well, and to keep queens not over two years old, swarming will be very limited. If to these precautions be added that of substituting for the old queens young ones of the current season's raising, before swarming has begun, practical immunity from swarming is generally insured.
