oney, while often they do not gather enough even for
their own use, and their owner closes the season by purchasing honey to
preserve them from starvation. The way in which I give the bees that
amount of protection in Winter, which conduces most powerfully to early
swarming, has already been described in the Chapter on Protection.

2. Another serious objection to all the ordinary swarming hives, is the
vexatious fact that if the bees swarm at all, they are liable to swarm
so often as to destroy the value of both the parent stock and the
after-swarms. Experienced bee-keepers obviate this difficulty, by
uniting second swarms, so as to make one good colony out of two; and
they return to the parent stock all swarms after the second, and even
this if the season is far advanced. Such operations consume much time,
and often give much more trouble than they are worth. By removing all
the queen cells but one, after the first swarm has left, second swarming
in my hives will always be prevented; and by removing all but two,
provision may be made for the issue of second swarms, and yet all
after-swarming be prevented. The process of returning after-swarms is
not only objectionable, on account of the time it requires, having often
to be repeated again and again before one queen is allowed to destroy
the others; but it also causes a large portion of the gathering season
to be wasted; for the bees seem unwilling to work with energy, so long
as the pretensions of several rival queens are unsettled.

3. Another very serious objection to Natural Swarming, as practiced with
the common hives, is the inability of the Apiarian who wishes rapidly to
multiply his colonies, to aid his late and small swarms, so as to build
them up into vigorous stocks. The time and money which are ordinarily
spent upon small colonies, are almost always thrown away; by far the
larger portion of them never survive the Winter, and the majority of
those that do, are so enfeebled, as to be of little or no value. If they
escape being robbed by stronger stocks, or destroyed by the moth, they
seldom recruit in season to swarm, and very often the feeding must be
repeated, the second Fall, or they will at last perish. I doubt not that
many of my readers will, from their own experience, endorse every word
of these remarks, as true to the very letter. All who have ever
attempted to multiply colonies by nursing and feeding small swarms, on
the ordinary plans, have found it a