BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
A similar multitude of bees, too, are left in the parent hive, with the exception of a fertile queen. Similar and yet dissimilar. Similar in that there are working bees--field-labourers and the nursing bees, and also drones. Dissimilar, because in addition, there are developing bees, _i.e.,_ brood in all its stages of development from the eggs that have only been laid a few hours to the bee just emerging from the chrysalis. I said above, _with this eareception--a fertile queen_. The parent hive the swarm quitted contains a queen, but she is not fertile. Until the old queen that is fertile has departed, she remains in her cell. She may not become fertile till some days, after the departure of swarm under review. During the tenure of the queen that accompanied the swarm, every day she religiously fulfilled all the conditions that Nature demanded of her--the production of eggs. While in health and strength every day saw hundreds, may thousands, of eggs deposited, one in each cell. Therewas no break in the continuity of her duties till the bees prepare for swarming. From then until the virgin queen that was left behind becomes fertile and becomes a mother, there is a break in the succession to the daily numerical increase to the inmates of the old hive.
All the conditions, too, of Nature are in sympathy with the new swarm. The weather is warm and genial. The gardens, fields, and forests are aglow with blossoms. The air is filled with the odour from the fruit trees, and in the evenings when you stand near the hive the perfume from the stored honey is almost over-powering.
Take a look into the hive the day before the swarm vacates, and you will see the bees densely packed between the brood combs, each comb a perfect slab of sealed brood or otherwise developing, and also eggs. Probably not much honey, but an abundance of bee-bread, and queen-cells containing inmates. If you search for the old queen, the mother of all this immense concourse of bees, this mass of animated insects, you may find her, but it is almost like the proverbial 'looking for a needle in a bundle of hay." Take another look a day or so after the swarm has left. How the appearance has changed. Not nearly so many adult bees, but plenty of little, woolly fellows to take the place of those that left. The slabs of sealed brood are gone, and there are plenty of empty cells. There are no eggs. Their place have been taken by little, nearly white bee-grubs, that are seen curling at the base of the cells, where you saw the eggs a few days before. Looking for the queen-cells in which were embryo queens, those you will find to be empty. The 'cups'' are there, with their edges much frayed. Other of these ''cups'' may be torn open at the side; but all are tenantless. You look for the queen that has emerged from one of them. Now, you think, I can find the queen, because there are not so many bees to contend with; but if you have had little or no experience in looking for these hidden mysteries, it is more than likely to be a search in vain. Still, she is there somewhere She is a virgin queen. Here we cannot call her the mother-bee. Virgin queens are not easily distinguished. You must not look for a _big_ bee, like the one you saw before they swarmed, but a bee not much larger than an ordinary worker. In form she will be much like her mother, but not in size. All this is Nature's way of propagating her species, distributing them far afield.
What has all the foregoing to do with artificial swarming Why, to show you the state of the parent stock, and outside the climatic conditions that are necessary before you attempt to increase the number of your bees by the division of the old stocks, or, as they are frequently termed, swarms.
If all the foregoing conditions are at hand, then you can commence work thus :--Take your strongest and best stocks, ones that are noted for their traits of storing honey. This is the golden rule of bee-keeping that every bee-keeper should paste on his veil, so as to be constantly before his eyes. _Weak and effete queens produce weaklings that are content only to live through the summer when it is all sunshine; in the winter they are content to die._ Operate on one hive at a time. Smoke them well from the entrance. Place an empty hive by the side of the one you are working on. It is as well to have near at hand some frames of empty combs. Take out from three to five of the best frames of brood (those containing the most sealed brood) having plenty of working bees thereon, and be sure to note if the queen is amongst them in the empty hive or empty combs. Place the brood combs in the centre of each hive, the one wherein you place the queen, and the one you leave queenless. If no empty combs be at hand, use division boards, but in that case you had better keep the brood on one side of the hive. Place the hive containing the queen on the new site. It is well to remember that the most bees should go with the queen, because at the time you are dividing, a number of bees will be at work, and these will return to the old site. It would be as well to put some obstacle in front of the removed bees, say a piece of wood leaning against the hive. This will cause the bees, when they come out, to take a survey of their new location, and prevent them returning to their old home. Indeed, both of the divisions may be removed to fresh sites if the foregoing precaution is taken. Of course, the brood comb in the old hive left on the stand must contain eggs from which a new queen can be developed. To develop a queen from an egg in a divided swarm is a round-about way of the division of swarms, and a very great waste of time. No one should keep bees unless he has a few fertile queens on hand, or the means of procuring them at short notice. A colony kept long without a queen is an unprofitable servant. If either of the divisions of a colony do not build up quickly, _i.e._, in about three weeks, add a frame of brood from a strong colony. But be sure you do not rob Peter to pay Paul.
**SUMMARY**.
Do not attempt the division of a swarm till drones are on the wing, or at least until there is drone-comb within, and the cells have been sealed for some days.
If we select queens, we should select drones, at least they should come from distinct mothers, if possible.
There should be sufficient empty combs in that portion of a division that are permitted to raise a new queen for themselves, otherwise it is probable that the new combs constructed will consist entirely of drone cells.
Do not have anything to do with the division of swarms in damp or cold weather.
Leave the numerically weakest division on the old stand.
Remember you are not likely to get a good queen from a weak colony.
Do not attempt to divide your colonies unless a fair amount of honey is coming in.
Remember, also, a rapid increase of swarms by dividing, and a good honey production, are not co-equal. Artificial swarming is always done at the expense of the production of honey.
In dividing, keep the brood in both divisions as compact as they were before division, and keep the frames of brood in the same order relatively.
Three or four frames of brood will be enough to form a new colony, be sure you have the old queen with the new colony.
## Chapter 22 Re-Queening.
That is the introduction of a young queen into an established colony. Deterioration of stock is always attributable to the want of new blood. The breeders of horned cattle, whether it be for the butcher or dairying purposes; of horses, for draught, speed, or ornamental use; of sheep, for various classes of wool; and also the breedsr of useful and ornamental members of the feathered tride, recognise the introduction of new blood as the chief factor of retaining special types of animals for special purposes. Nor is the introduction of fresh blood a necessity confined to only the animal kingdom, both domestic and wild. Change of seed is as necessary to the agricultural and the horticultural as a change of sires amongst stock-breeders. The very soil itself becomes sick of having to produce a crop of the same class year after year. In the introduction of new breeds and varieties in the foregoing that has been obtained through sports or crosses, how difficult it is to fix and retain an ideal type. Generations after the type is supposed to have been permanently fixed there will appear among the fancied strain a stranger, differing altogether from the paternal or maternal side--a throw-back--a type of generations long gone by --weedy and of little use. This is not the sole reason why we requeen. As yet we have not arrived at that point of breeding special strains of bees and fixing the type to a permanent ideal with only an occasional throw-back. With bees we cannot control the sexes as with other domestic animals or even with members of the vegetable kingdom. The mating of bees is very much haphazard. That is the reason why dealers in queen bees charge so much more for ''tested queens'' than for untested. They cannot tell the paternity until the resultant progeny has been examined. Bees, too, like all other organisms, have a very strong tendency to revert to the type from whence they sprang.
''Change and decay'' is a condition written on all things since the days of creation, and it is this change that is so necessary among the hive bees. The innate of the hive that has the longest life is the queen. Drones are required only for the season, andthat season is sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, according to climatic circumstances. The life of the workers, too, ''from the cradle to the grave,'' is dependent on the amount of work they have to do. The greater the honey-flow the shorter their lives, and six to eight weeks is their allotted span--longer when there is little or no honey coming in. The queen's life continues for years. She matures rapidly to her apex of perfection, and when that point is reached her reproductive powers gradually diminish. Yet this is not exactly the right way to state decaying powers. Almost to the last she is reproductive; but it is an unprofitable progeny--male bees that have not the power, no matter how good the will may be, to procure the common necessaries of bee life. Hence the necessity of regularly and systematically superseding all queen bees. This, to obtain success as a beekeeper, should be done every alternate year. Some bee-keepers introduce a fresh young queen every season, but I don't know that it is a bad practice. There is more to be gained by it than lost.
There are many methods, ways, or plans, adopted by various bee-keepers for re-queening, all more or less adaptable to obtain the desired results.
''Many fish of many kinds and many men of many minds'' is an old aphorism, and as there are many modes of re-queening, I propose here to deal with the most of them. Before doing so I should like to point out to the reader a few little facts in relation to this phase of bee-keeping.
''\(\Lambda\) new broom sweeps clean'' is another proverb that is also very applicable at this point of the subject. Did you ever notice the energy thrown into the work of construction by a swarm that has been newly lived! After they have taken possession of their new home, clustered, and the process of wax-secretion is well under way, the bees having spread themselves out in wax-working curtains and ''the foundation of the house is laid,'' the queen becomes feverishly anxious to commence her duties of reproduction --egg-laying. This anxiety is shared equally by the workers, for they are as eager to be about their maternal duties as the mother bee. Ofttimes, before the cells for worker bees are complete, the queen will deposit her egg therein, and the work of cell-construction proceeds whilst the egg is maturing. At this stage in their domestic economy the zeal of the workers knows no bounds. Before the sun rises they are up and away, and returning again and again with the fruits of their early excursions. So it goes on all day until the lateness of the hour checks further outside labour. This will continue for the first and well on into the second season if there be out-door labour to be done. After these two seasons the foraging-bees' zeal and energy will begin to wane. They don't rise in such numbers as they did, and their excursions are not so frequent as they were. Why! The queen's procreative powers are subsiding, therefore the workers' maternal duties and love of offspring diminish in like manner. To introduce a new queen, one having all the elements of a queen that has sailed forth with a swarm, is to put new life and energy in the bees that had aforetime settled down into the humdrum lassitude of a declining queen. A change may be as good as a rest. But in this case a change /means more labour for the bees and extra profit for the beekeeper.
Again, what pleasure there is in knowing that you are master of your bees, and that you can stimulate a sluggish colony into activity. This activity is a mutual help to both parties.
Let me enumerate the different methods of doing this all-important work :-(_a_) By destroying the old queen, and letting the swarm take its chance ; (_b_) by grafting a queen cell on the comb of a queenless colony ; (_c_) by the aid of chloroform ; (_d_) by leaving the colony queenless for a given period ; (_e_) by direct introduction. Can these various methods be equally successful? All may be successful, but not equally so. Then why recommend them? Because some of the methods referred to can only be successful in the hands of an experienced bee-keeper. Other methods depend for success upon the season of the year and the abundance or otherwise of the floral season.
By destroying the old queen and letting the colony take its chance.--In the hands of a beginner this is always a success. In the warmer parts of this State there are always eggs and larvae from which the bees can manufacture a queen. Although a new queen can be thus produced, it is not wise to do so at all seasons of the year, because drones are not always available. If there are no drones the queen will lay only drone- eggs. Spring and summer are the only seasons that should be chosen, and the former one preferable. Look at the waste of time in this method of re-queening. There is a loss of about seven weeks during the most important season of the year. No ; don't requeen in this way if you can succeed otherwise.
By grafting a queen cell on the comb of a queenless colony. You must first make it queenless, and let it remain so for three or four days. Illustrations of this have been given elsewhere. Like the former method, there is no saving of time in this. Its only advantage over the other method is that you introduce a queen from a better strain of bees.
By the aid of chloroform : I have never tried this, but in the _Canadian Bee Journal,_ page 390, are these words :--"Drop a dry sponge into the fire-barrel of the smoker, then a sponge wetted with chloroform (a teaspoonful), and another dry one on the top of this in the nozzle, when you are ready for action. Proceed to the queenless colonies, and puff in the chloroform at the entrance (as in the act of smoking), say for a quarter of a minute. Then pass to the next (hive), and so on, for about two minutes. Return to the first live, give a few more puffs with your chloroform-smoker, and let your queen run in." The writer claims that in this manner you may run in fifty quencs in so many minutes, and in each case be successful.
By leaving the colony queenless for a given period. It is well known that if a colony is deprived of its queen that the tone emitted by the bees differs from that previously uttered, and that when their own queen is reintroduced peace seems to reign, and the bees appear to be happy. Huber, in the early days of scientific bee-keeping, demonstrated this ; but when he attempted to substitute a strange queen in lieu of their own, they declared war to the knife with her. Now, what was the reason? Most of the lower order of animals recognise each other by the senses of touch and smell. Ants meeting each other touch with their antennae, their organs of smell, and there is no doubt that bees recognise their queen in the same way. On one occasion I rolled a queen in honey, and introduced her to a colony at the same time as I withdrew the reigning queen. It was a success. At other times I have tried the same plan, and it has been a failure.
## Chapter Xxi. Transferring.
This is a phase of bee-keeping that falls only to the lot of beginners. \(\Lambda\) bee-keeper who has had if but a very slight insight into the freemasonry of bee-life should have risen above transferring, other than when he may have bought out a gin case bee-farm for the purpose of adding to the number of his colonies.
The maxim, "'be gentle when amongst bees,"' never received a better illustration than on the day **I** transferred a colony at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College, for the purpose of obtaining the illustrations accompanying this article. I wanted the views to be original and true to life. To anyone who has not seen a colony transferred from a common box to an improved bar-frane hive, such illustrations will be extremely interesting, as few can understand how freely and safely these pugnacious little warriors can be handled when we set about it in the right way. Two or three friends left Sydney with us to see that interesting operation. One little fellow who had not been told that he must be gentle and kind when amongst bees, took a stroll amid the hives, but when a bee flew against him he soon quickened his pace, and his cries and tears told that he had not learned the maxim. **A** number of students of the College had the privilege to be present to watch and take lessons in transferring. At first they were very dubious as to my statement that bees can be handled as easily as you can handle chickens, when you once know how. That you can pick up bees in handfuls as you can pick up handfuls of grain seemed to their ears to savour somewhat of the Rougemont type of phraseology. When the gin case of bees was picked up and carried to the work-table, the bearer discarding all bee protection whatever; and when the manipulator doffed coat, turned up his shirt sleeves, and commenced to break up the old box for the purpose of getting at its contents to put them into bar-frames, it was a picture to see how the uninitiated amongst those students stood back and wondered
how such liberties could be taken with such a dangerous race of combative insects. More quickly than it takes to write it, when the box was placed bottom upwards prior to _drumming_, the bees came out in hundreds, may in thousands. The students, by their movements, gave one the idea that a life amid bees was not a happy one, but when the manipulator, with naked hand and bare arms, began to remove the bees that blocked the way to the receiving box the students' surprise ripened into confidence. No matter who the manipulator is, or who the onlookers are, if the former understands the why and wherefore of bee-life it is always the same. I have met timid ladies who would not go within ''coo-ee'' distance of a bee-hive, because, as they assert, the bees are always in a fightable disposition ''when they are near.'' Yet in a few minutes afterwards I have seen those same ladies come over to the work-table and, removing their kid gloves, handling the bees as freely as the manipulator was doing. And men, too, who have Herculean strength and the courage of a ''she-bear robbed of her whelps,'' but would turn tail and run if a little bee flew against them, converted from the idea that bees cannot be handled, and after one practical illustration, such as we had at the College, become enthusiastic disciples of the physically blind I'uber, and develop into enthusiastic followers of Langstroth's method of bee-keeping.
Wherein does the supposed secret lie? Not in any charm, or in the possession of a stupifier, as is too often supposed ; but the manipulator has confidence, and, as ''like begets like,'' his confidence stimulates and creates a confidence in the onlookers. It was so when these illustrations were produced. It can be seen when the receiver, made out of an empty candle-box, was put in position how the onlookers stood as far from danger as possible, and how the graduations of confidence expand up to the illustration where the students are gathered around the work-table. These youths are so intermixed with the bees, that if the latter werd human beings it would be a difficult task to find the former. All that has ever been written about subduing and handling bees will never convince a sceptic in bee matters half so much as this one bit of practical work. Every onlooker that is depicted around that table is now convinced that bees can be handled, as I told them before I began work, with as little danger as we handle chickens. Count the individuals in the group, note their attire ; observe the subdued, patient, movements of those industrious little bees as they are seen being tumbled about in the various illustrations, and ask how many in that group got stung, and the reply will be, _one_. And why did he get stung? He placed his hand _on_ a bee ; and if a hurly fellow were to come along and put his hand with crushing weight on you, would not you sting? It may not be a sting that would give physical pain, but your stinging rejoinder would give mental pain.
On another pago the artist has represented an individual as having "dropped his gun and run." On this occasion he stood his ground well. He had learned the lesson, "Confidence, gentleness, kindness ;" a lesson not difficult to acquire, but when once mastered must always be borne in mind and ever acted upon; and as surely as sparks fly upwards. success in transferring and other manipulations in connection with bee-keeping will follow.
Can anyone, ladies especially, transfer bees? If these illustrations and what I have written, do not convince you, what will? Are the implements used in transferring expensive and difficult to obtain? Not a bit of it. Some are in every house, and most of the others can be found in the wood-heap or about the yard. They are all visible in the illustrations; let us take an inventory of them. First there is that ever-indispensable "smoker"; you cannot do without a smoke bellows. Pender's is one of the best we have ; that is it you see in my hand. It was charged with a bit of half-decayed bagging. But more on that subject anon. When the old box stood on its original stand a half-dozen strong blasts of smoke were driven in at the entrance That settled the question "'to sting or not to sting"' for all the rest of the necessary work in connection with their being transferred to a more convenient (for the bee-keeper) and a better house (for the bees). What did the smoke do? Why, old Virgil understood the use of smoke with bees. Centuries ago he wrote to this effect, "'If at any time you would open their narrow cells (to take) the stores of honey from their treasure house, first rinse out your mouth with a draught of water, and hold in front of you clouds of smoke." The smoke does not stupify them, but each innate takes in about a week's supply of honey. All animals are more docile when they have their stomachs full than when they are empty. Otherwise, you see the bees are removed some distance from their old camping-ground to the protection of an outhouse. Not altogether for the convenience of the makeshift table you see, but the foraging bees returning home will resent Figure 9: Yes, we believe it now. Bees to the right of us, bees to the left of us, humned, buzzed, and bumped us, but none of them stung us.
your intruding on their domain, and the other bees in the apiary may become robbers; and thus being out of their way is being out of danger.
Secondly, there is a broken candle-box 'with about a third of its side removed. With this the four cleats that hold it in position as seen in Fig. 3 are made. Third is a basin to hold the honey as it is taken from the hive-box, as comb with honey should not be put in the frames when transferring. Fourth, a dinner knife, seen in No. 5, for cutting out the comb from the box, and Fifth, some narrow bits of tape for the purpose of holding the comb in position in the frame as seen in Fig. 4. In front of the table is the bottom board of the old box.