But on opening the hive they found the brood-combs choked with honey, few eggs laid, and swarming cells well under way.
“Why, this queen must be no good!” exclaimed Carl.
“No, it isn’t that,” replied Alice. “But a queen never lays well just after she’s come out of the mailing-cage, and the bees have got ahead of her and filled up the combs with honey where the brood should be. The poor queen has no room left to lay in; she feels crowded and that’s what gave them the idea of swarming.”
It was lucky they had discovered it in time. They cut out the incipient queen-cells, gave empty combs, and felt sure that they had made the colony safe. They were just proceeding to another of the colonies where one of the new queens was, when, with a loud roaring, a storm of bees began to volley out of a hive at the farthest end of the yard.
They surged about wildly in the air for some time, and then settled in a cluster on the tip of a small cedar where swarms had alighted several times before. Alice kept an eye on them, while Carl hurried off to the barn for fresh hives.
Before he could get back another swarm roared out of a second hive, eddied about like a cloud of smoke, and finally settled. And then a third hive swarmed.
When bees are in the mood for it, the flying of a single swarm will sometimes start a perfect uproar of swarming throughout an apiary, and colonies will become carried away by the excitement and swarm without being normally ready for it. That seemed to be the case this time. Bob came running out to help, but a fourth swarm was already in the air. Then came two more, which united and settled in one enormous cluster, the size of a large bucket. Bees fairly darkened the air; the apiarists lost track of how many swarms were out or where they came from, and the noise was like a small tornado.
The three rushed about frantically, gathering up such clustered swarms as they could most easily reach, and Bob was instructed to dash a dipperful of water right into the top of every colony that might be likely to abscond. Such a drenching is an effectual check to swarming for that day at any rate and does the bees no harm.
This vigorous treatment produced some quiet. No more swarms had emerged for about fifteen minutes, when the familiar crescendo roar sounded again, and Bob uttered a despairing yell. From the three-dollar queen’s colony the bees were pouring out like steam from an escape-valve.
“Oh! don’t let them go!” shrieked Alice.