A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees

by John M. Weeks

When bees are collected in drawers for the purpose of equalizing colonies, by doubling, &c., they should be permitted to stand until evening before they are united, it being a more favorable time for them to become acquainted with each other by degrees; and the scent of the bees in the lower apartment will enter through the apertures during the night so much that there is a greater degree of sameness in the peculiar smell of the two colonies, which takes off their animosity, if they chance to have any.

No confusion or noise which is uncommon to the bees should ever be made during their swarming or hiving. The only effect of noise, ringing of bells, &tc., that I could ever discover, was, to render them more hostile and unmanageable.

When bees are treated in accordance with their true nature, they are sometimes hostile, which originates from two causes: First, some of them lie out of the hive before swarming and some of them, in consequence of their confusion in swarming, are not apprised of the intention of the Queen to leave the old stock and seek a new habitations and they sally forth with the swarm without filling their sacks with stores, which always makes them more irritable than when their stomachs are rilled with food.

The Vermont hive possesses advantages in this respect, as well as others, far superior to the old box. Instead of lying out before swarming, as in the old box, they go up into the drawers, and are constantly employed in depositing the delicious fruits of their labors; and being in the hive, where they can hear and observe all the movements of the Queen, they go forth well stored with provisions suited to the peculiar exigency of the case; which ordinarily prevents all feelings of hostility.

The second reason why bees are sometimes irritable, and are disposed to sting when they swarm, is, the air is forbidding to them, by being cold or otherwise, so as to impede them in their determined emigration. In all such cases, the apiarian should be furnished with a veil, made of millinet, or some light covering which may be worn over his hat, and let down so low as to cover his face and bosom, and fixed in such a manner as to prevent their stinging. He should also put on a pair of thick woolen gloves or stockings over his hands, thus managing them without the least danger.

A clean hive is all that is needed for a swarm of bees, with careful and humane treatment.

A cluster of bees should never be shook or jarred any more than merely to disengage them from the limb or place where they are collected, nor should they fall any great distance, because their sacks are full when they swarm, which renders them both clumsy and harmless, and harsh treatment makes them irritable and unmanageable.

I know of no rule by which the exact day of their first swarming can be known with certainty. The apiarian will estimate near the time by the number of bees in and about the hive, as it will become very much crowded.

The day of second swarming, and all after that during the same season, may be most certainly predicted as follows: Listen near the entrance of the hive in the evening. If a swarm is coming forth the next day, the Queen will be heard giving an alarm at short intervals. The same alarm may be heard the next morning. The observer will generally hear two Queens at a time in the same hive, the one much louder than the other. The one making the least noise is yet in her cell, and in her minority. The sound emitted by the Queens is peculiar, differing materially from that of any other bee. It consists of a number of monotonous notes in rapid succession, similar to those emitted by the mud-wasp when working her mortar and joining it to her cells, to raise miss-wasps. If, after all, the weather is unfavorable to their swarming two or three days while in this peculiar stage, they will not be likely to swarm again the same season.

Two reasons, and two only, can be assigned why bees ever swarm. The first is, want of room, and the second, to avoid the battle of the Queens. It is indeed true that there are exceptions. Perhaps one in a hundred swarms may come forth before their hive is filled with comb; but from nearly forty years experience in their cultivation, I never saw an instance of it, where the hive was not full of bees at their first swarming. When bees go from the old stock to the tree without alighting, it is when they lie out of the hive before swarming, and the embassy are sent forth before the swarm leaves the old stock. When the first swarm comes forth, eggs, young brood, or both, are left in the combs, but no Queen; for the old Queen always goes forth with the swarm, and leaves the old stock entirely destitute. Not a single Queen, in any stage of minority, is left in the hive. The bees very soon find themselves destitute of the means of propagating their species, (for the Queen is the only female in the hive,) and immediately set themselves to work in constructing several royal cells, (probably to be more sure of success,) take a grub (larva) from the cell of a common worker, place it in the new-made royal cell, feed it on royal jelly, and in a few days they a Queen. Now as the eggs are laid in about three litters per week, the bees, to be still more sure of succeeding in their enterprize, take maggots, differing in age, so that if more than one Queen is hatched, one will be older than the others. This fact accounts for hearing more than one Queen at the same time, because one comes out a perfect fly, while the other is a nymph, or little younger, and has not yet made her escape from the cell where she was raised; and yet both answer the alarm of the other, the youngest more feebly than the elder.