o off with a swarm, and they
will not leave without her.

38. It should enable the Apiarian, if he allows his bees to swarm, and
wishes to secure surplus honey, to prevent them from throwing more than
one swarm in a season.

Second and third swarms must be returned to the old stock, if the
largest quantities of surplus honey are to be realized. It is
troublesome to watch them, deprive them of their queens, and restore
them to the parent hive. They often issue with new queens again and
again; and waste, in this way, both their own time, and that of their
keeper. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." In my hives,
as soon as the first swarm has issued, and been hived, all the queen
cells except one, in the hive from which it came, may be cut out, and
thus all after-swarming will very easily and effectually be prevented.
(See Chapter on Artificial Swarming, for the use to which these
supernumerary queens may be put.) When the old stock is left with but
one queen, she runs no risk of being killed or crippled in a contest
with rivals. By such contests, a colony is often left without a queen,
or in possession of one which is too much maimed to be of any service.
(See Chapter on the Loss of the Queen.)

39. A good hive should enable the Apiarian, if he relies on natural
swarming, and wishes to multiply his colonies as fast as possible, to
make vigorous stocks of all his small after-swarms.

Such swarms contain a young queen, and if they can be judiciously
strengthened, usually make the best stock hives. If hived in a common
hive, and left to themselves, unless very early, or in very favorable
seasons, they seldom thrive. They generally desert their hives, or
perish in the winter. If they are small, they cannot be made powerful,
even by the most generous feeding. There are too few bees to build comb,
and take care of the eggs which a healthy queen can lay; and when fed,
they are apt to fill with honey, the cells in which young bees ought to
be raised; thus making the kindness of their owner serve only to hasten
their destruction. My hives enable me to supply all such swarms at once
with combs containing bee-bread, honey and brood almost mature. They are
thus made strong, and flourish as well, nay, often better than the first
swarms which have an old queen, whose fertility is generally not so
great as that of a young one.

40. It should enable the Apiarian to multiply his colonies with a
certainty and rapidity