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Not Always To Be Depended Upon

Categories: SWARMING.
Bee Keeping: Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained

One stock in fifteen may commence piping, yet send out no swarm. The

bees will change their minds about coming out, and kill their queens,

or allow the eldest one of them to destroy the others, or some other

way, as they do not always swarm in such circumstances. But when the

piping continues over twenty-four hours, I never knew _but one

failure_! I have known a few (two or three) to commence this piping,

while I suppo
ed the old queen was yet present, and had not left the

hive, on account of bad weather, but a swarm issued soon after. Also,

three instances where I supposed the old queen lost, from some other

cause than leading out a swarm, and the stock reared some young ones to

supply her place. It occurred in or near the swarming season, and one

or two issues was the consequence. One case was three weeks in advance

of the season, and the swarm was about half the usual size. When a

swarm has been out, and returned at the last of the swarming season, it

is much more probable to re-issue, than if it depended on an old queen

for a leader, that had not been out. Such will sometimes be a week or

ten days later than others. Once I had the first swarm kept back by wet

weather, and the second came out on the fifth day after; several other

instances on the seventh and eighth; and one as late as the sixteenth,

after the first.



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