BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
And each thin form, still ling'ring on the sight,
Trails, as it shoots, a line of silver light.
IIigh pois'd on buoyant wing, the thoughtful queen,
In gaze attentive, views the varied scene,
And soon her far-fetch'd ten discerns below
The light laburnum lift her polish'd brow,
Wave her green leafy ringlets o'er the glade,
And seem to beckon to her friendly shade.
Swift as the falcoa's sweep, the monarch bends
Her flight abrupt ; the following host descends.
Round the fine twig, like cluster'd grapes, they close
In thickening wreaths, and court a short repose."
Evass.
The multiplication of colonies by swarming, both guards the bee against the possibility of extinction, and makes its labors in the highest degree useful to man. The laws of reproduction in insects not living in regular colonies, secure an ample increase of their numbers. The same is true of those which live in colonies during the warm weather only, as hornets, wasps, and humble-bees. In the Fall, the males perish, while the impregnated female, retresting into Winter quarters, remain dormant till warm weather restores them to activity, that each may become the mother of a new family.
The honey-bee, however, is so organized that it must live in a community during the entire year; for while the balmy breezes of the Spring will quickly thaw the frozen body of a torpid wasp, the bee is chilled by a temperature no lower than 50\({}^{\circ}\); and it would be as impossible to restore a frozen bee to animation, as to recall to life the stiffened corpuses in the charnelhouse of the Convent of the Great St. Bernard. Bees, therefore, in cool weather, must associate in large numbers, to maintain the heat necessary for their preservation; and the formation of new colonies, after the manner of wasps and hornets, is out of the question. Even if the young queens, like the mother-wasps, were able, without any assistance, to found new colonies, they could not maintain the warmth requisite for the development of their young. And if this were possible, and they were furnished with a proboscis, for gathering honey, as long as that of a worker, baskets on their thighs for carrying bee-bread, and pouches on their abdomens for secreting wax, they would still be unable to amass measures for our use, or even to lay up the stores requisite for their own preservation.
How admirably are all these difficulties obviated by the present arrangement! Their domicile being well supplied with all the requisite materials, the bees have added thousands, in the full vigor of youth, to their already numerous population, while such insects as depend upon the heat of the sun are still dormant. They can thus send off early colonies, strong enough to take full advantage of the honey-harvest, and to provision the new hive against the approach of Winter. From these considerations, it is evident that swarming, so far from being the forced or unnatural event which some imagine, is one, which could not possibly be dispensed with, in a state of nature.
Let us now inquire under what circumstances swarming ordinarily takes place.
The time when new swarms may be expected, depends, of course, upon the climate, the forwardness of the season, and the strength of the stocks. In our Northern and Middle States, they seldom issue before the latter part of May ; and June may there be considered as the great swarming month. In Brownsville, Texas, on the lower Rio Grande, bees often swarm quite early in March.
In the Spring, as soon as a hive well filled* with comb, can no longer accommodate its teenning population, the bees prepare for emigration, by building a number of royal cells. These cells are begun about the time that the drones make their appearance in the open air ; and when the young queens arrive at maturity, the males are usually very numerous.
Footnote *: In our Northern and Middle States, bees seldom swarm unless the hive is filled with comb; in Southern latitudes, however, the swarming distinct seems to be much more powerful. In Matanoras and Brownsville, I have seen many colonies issue from hive only partially filled with comb.
The first swarm is invariably led off by the old queen, unless she has died from accident or disease, when it is accompanied by one of the young ones reared to supply her loss. The old mother, unless delayed by unfavorable weather, usually leaves soon after one or more of the royal cells are sealed over. There are no signs from which the Aparian can predict the certain issue of a _first_ swarm. For years, I spent much time in the rain attempt to discover some _infalible_ indications of first swarming ; until facts convinced me that there can be no such indications.
If the weather is unpleasant, or the blossoms yield an insufficient supply of honey, bees often change their minds, and refuse to swarm at all, even although their preparations have been so fully completed, that, like the traveler whose trunks are packed, they have filled their honey-sacs for their intended journey.
If, in the swarming season, but few bees leave a strong hive, on a clear, calm, and warm day, when other colonies are busly at work, we may look with great confidence for a swarm, unless the weather prove suddenly unfavorable. As the old queens which accompany the first swarm are heavy with eggs, they fly with such difficulty, that they are shy of venturing out, except on fair, still days. If the weather is very saltry, a swarm will sometimes issue as early as seven o'clock in the morning ; but from ten, A.M., to two, P. M., is the usual time; and the majority of swarms come off when the sun is within an hour of the meridian. Occasionally, a swarm ventures out as late as five, P. M.; but an old queen is seldom guilty of such an indiseretion.
I have repeatedly witnessed, in my observing-hives, the whole process of swarming. On the day fixed for their departure, the queen is very restless, and instead of depositing her eggs in the cells, roams over the combs, and communicates her agitation to the whole colony. The emigrating bees usually fill themselves with honey, just before their departure ; but in one instance, I saw them lay in their supplies more than two hours before they left. A short time before the swarm rises, a few bees may generally be seen sporting in the air, with their heads turned always to the hive ; and they occasionally fly in and out, as though impatient for the important event to take place. At length, a violent agitation commences in the hive ; the bees appear almost f in circles continually enlarging, like those made by a stone thrown into still water, until, at last, the whole hive is in a state of the greatest ferment, and the bees, rushing impetuously to the entrance, pour forth in one steady stream. Not a bee looks behind, but each pushes straight ahead, as though flying " for dear life," or urged on by some invisible power, in its headlong career.
Often, the queen does not come out until many have left ; and she is frequently so heavy, from the number of eggs in her ovaries, that she falls to the ground, incapable of rising with her colony into the air. The bees soon miss her, and a very interesting scene may now be witnessed. Diligent search is at once made for their lost mother ; the swarm scattering in all directions, so that the leaves of the adjoining trees and bushes are often covered almost as thickly with anxious explorers, as with drops of rain after a copious shower. If she cannot be found, they commonly return to the old hive, in from five to fifteen minutes, though they occasionally attempt to enter a strange one, or to unite with another swarm.
The ringing of bells, and beating of kettles and frying-pans, is probably not a whit more efficacious, than the hideous noises of some savage tribes, who, imagining that the sun, in an eelpse, has been swallowed by an enormous dragon, resort to such means to eompel his snakeship to disgorge their favorite luminary.
Many who have never practised " tanging," have never had a swarm leave without settling. Still, as one of the "country sounds," and as a relic of the olden times, even the most matter-of-fnet bee-man can readily excuse the enthusiasm of that pleasant writer in the London Quarterly Review, who discourses as follows :
"Some fine, warm morning in May or June, the whole atmosphere seems alive with thousands of bees, whirling and buzing, passing and repassing, wheeling about in rapid circles, like a group of maddened baschanals. Out runs the good housewife, with the frying-pan and key--the orthodox instruments for _ringing_--and never ceases her rough music, till the bees have settled. This custom, as old as the birth of Jupiter, is one of the most pleasing and exciting of the countryman's life; and there is an old colored print of bee-ringing still occasionally met with on the walls of a country inn, that has eharms for us, and makes us think of bright sunny weather in the derarieset November day. Whether, as Aristotle says, it affects them through pleasure or fear, or whether, indeed, they hear* it at all, is still as uncertain as that philosopher left it; but we can wish no better luck to every bee-master that neglects the tradition, than that he may lose every swarm for which he omits to raise this time-honored concert."
Footnote *: The piling of the queen has a shrill, metallic sound, which generally may be overwritten by the "most" as to distract view with the notion of a person and to the other.
If, before its issue, a swarm has selected a new home, no amount of _noise_ will compel them to alight, but as soon as the emigrating colony have all left the hive, they fly in a " bee-line" to the chosen spot. I have noticed, that such unceremonious leave-taking, though quite common when bees are neglected, seldom occurs when they are properly enred for.
When the Apiarian perceives that a swarm, instead of clustering, rises higher and higher in the air and means to depart, not a moment must be lost: instead of empty noises, he should resort to means much more effective to stay their vagrant propensities. Water or dirt thrown among them, will often so disorganize them as to compel them to alight. The most original of all devices for stop ping them, is to flash the sun's rays among them, by a looking-glass! I never had occasion to try it, but an anonymous writer says be never knew it fill. If foreibly prevented from eloping, they will be almost sure to leave, soon after living, for their selected home, unless the queen is confined. If there is reason to expect desertion, and the queen cannot be confined, the bees may be carried into the cellar, and kept in total darkness, until towards sunset of the third day, being supplied, in the mean time, with water and honey to build their combs. The same precautions must be used when fugitive swarms are re-lived.
It is always very easy to prevent a new colony from abandoning the movable-comb hive, by regulating the entrance so that, while a loaded worker-bee can just pass, the queen will be unable to leave; or a piece of comb, with _unsealed_ worker-brood, may be transferred to the new hive, when a swarm will seldom forsake it.
It may generally be ascertained, soon after living a swarm, whether or not it intends to remain. If, on applying the ear to the side of the hive, a sound be heard, as of gnawing or rubbing, the bees are getting ready for comb-building, and will rarely cleanup.
If a colony decide to go, they look upon the hive in which they are put as only a temporary stopping-place, and seldom trouble themselves to build any comb. If the hive permits inspection, we may tell at a glance when bees are disgusted with their new residence, and mean to forsake it. They not only refuse to work with the characteristic energy of a new swarm, but their very attitude, hanging, as they do, with a sort of dogged or supercollous air, as though they hated even so much as to touch their detected abode, proclaims to the experienced eye, that they are unwilling tenants, and mean to be off as soon as they can. Numerous experiments to compel bees to work in observing-hives exposed to the full light of day, from the moment they were hired, instead of keeping them, as I now do, in darkness for several days, have made me quite familiar with all such do-nothing proceedings before their departure.
Bees sometimes abandon their hives very early in Spring, or late in Summer or Fall. Although exhibiting the appearance of natural swarming, they leave, not because the population is so crowded that they wish to form new colonies, but because it is either so small, or the hive so destitute. of supplies, that they are driven to desperation. Seening to have a presentiment that they must perish if they stay, instead of awaiting the sure approach of famine, they sally out to see if they cannot better their condition. I have known a starving colony to leave their hive on a Spring-like day in December.
It may seem strange that the instincts of so provident an insect should not always impel it to select a suitable domiele before venturing to abandon the old home ; since often, before they are housed again, they are exposed to powerful winds and drenching rains, which beat down and destroy many of their number.
I solve this bee-problem, like many others, by considering how the present arrangement conduces to the advantage of man.
Bees would have been of little service to him, if, instead of tarrying till he had time to hive them, their instincts had impelled them to decomp, without delay, from the restraints of domestication. In this, as in many other things, we see that what on a superficial view seemed an obvious imperfection, proves, on closer examination, to be a special contrivance to answer important ends.
To return to our new swarm. The queen sometimes
Whether bees send out scouts _before_ or _after_ swarming, may admit of more question. When a colony flies to its new home without alighting, the scouts must have been dispatched before swarming. If this were the usual course, we should expect every colony to take the same speedy departure; or if they should cluster for the convenience of the queen, or any bees over-fatigned by the excitement of swarming, we should look for only a transient tarrying. Instead of this, they often remain until the next day, and instances are not unfrequent of a much more protracted delay. The stopping of bees in their flight to cluster again, is not inconsistent with these views; for if the weather is hot when they first cluster, and the sun shines directly upon them, they will often leave before they have found a suitable habitation. Sometimes the queen of an emigrating swarm, being heavy with eggs, and unaccustomed to fly, is compelled to alight, before she can reach their intended home. Queens, under such circumstances, are occasionally unwilling to take wing again, and the poor bees sometimes attempt to lay the foundations of their colony on fence-rails, hay-stacks, or other unsuitable places.
Mr. Wagner says, that he once knew a swarm of bees to lodge under the lowermost limb of an isolated coke, in a corn-field. It was not discovered until the corn was harvested, in September. Those who found it, mist took it for a recent swarm, and in brushing it down to hive it, broke off three pieces of comb, each about eight inches square. Mr. Henry M. Zolliekoffer, of Philadelphia, informed me that he knew a swarm to settle on a willlow-tree in that city, in a lot owned by the Pennsylvania Hospital ; it remained there for some time, and the boys pelted it with stones, to get possession of its comb and honey.
The necessity for scouts or explorers seems to be unquestionable, unless we can admit that bees have the faculty of flying in an "_etr line,_" to a hollow tree which they have never seen, and which may be the only one among thousands where they can find a suitable anode.
These views are confirmed by the repeated instances in which a few bees have been noticed inquisitively prying into a hole in a hollow tree, or the cornice of a building, and have, before long, been followed by a whole colony.
Having described the method commonly pursued by a new swarm, when left to their natural instincts, we return to the parent-stock from which they enigrated.
From the immense number which have abandoned it, we should naturally infer that it must be nearly depopulated. \(\Lambda\)s bees swarm in the pleasantest part of the day, some suppose that the population is replenished by the return of large numbers from the fields; this, however, cannot often be the case, as it is seldom that many are absent from the hive at the time of swarming. To those who limit the fertility of the queen to four hundred eggs a day, the rapid replenishing of a hive, after swarming, must be inexplicable; but to those who have seen her lay from one to three thousand eggs a day, it is no mystery at all. Enough bees remain to carry on the domestic operations of the hive; and as the old queen departs only when there is a teeming population, and when thousands of young are daily hatching, and tens of thousands rapidly maturing, the hive, in a short time, is almost as populous as it was before swarming.
Those who suppose that the new colony consists wholly of young bees, forced to enigrate by the older ones, if they closely examine a new swarm, will find that while some have the ragged wings of age, others are so young as to be barely able to fly.
After the tumult of swarming is over, not a bee that did not participate in it, attempts to join the new colony, and not one that did, seeks to return. What determines some to go, and others to stay, we have no certain means of knowing. How wonderful must be the impression made upon an insect, to cause it in a few minutes so completely to lose its strong affection for the old home, that when established in a _hive only a few feet distant, it pays not the slightest attention to its former abode!_ When their new domieile is removed--after some have gone to the fields--from the place where the bees were hired, on their return, they often fly for hours in ceascles circles about the spot where the missing hive stood; and sometimes continue the vain search for their companions, until dropping from exhaustion, they perish in close proximity to their old home.
It has already been stated that, if the weather is favorable, the old queen usually leaves near the time that the young queens are sealed over to be changed into nymphs. In about a week, one of them hatches; and the question must be decided whether or not, any more colonies shall be formed that season. If the hive is well filled with bees, and the season is in all respects promising, it is generally decided in the affirmative; although, under such circumstances, some very strong colonies refuse to swarm more than once; while the repeated swarming of weaker ones often ruins both the parent-stock and its after-swarms.
If the bees decide to swarm but once, the first hatched queen, being allowed to have her own way, rushes immediately to the cells of her sisters, and stings them to death. The other bees probably aid her in this murderous transaction; they certainly tear open the eradles of the slaughtered innoeents (Pl. XIV, Fig. 47, 47), and remove them
from the cells. Their dead bodies may often be found on the ground in front of the hive.
When a queen has emerged from her cell in the natural way, the bees cut it down (Pl. XIV., Fig. 47; e), till only a small acorn-cup remains; but if she met with a violent end, they usually remove the whole cell. By counting these acorn-cups, we can ascertain how many queens have hatehed in a hive.
If the bees of the parent-stock decide to send out a second colony, the first hatehed queen is prevented from killing the others. A strong guard is kept over their cells, and as often as she approaches them with murderous intent, she is bitten, or given to understand by other most uneourtier-like demonstrations, that even a queen cannot, in all things, do just as she plenses.
Like some human beings who cannot have their own way, she is highly offended when thus repulsed, and utters, in a quick succession of notes, a shrill, angry sound, not unlike the rapid utterance of the words, "deep, deep." If held in the closed hand, she will make a similar noise. To this angry note, one or more of the unhatehed queens will respond, in a somewhat hoarser key, just as a cook, by erowing, bids defiance to its rivals. These sounds, so entirely unlike the usual steady hum of the bees, or the fluttering noises of unhatehed queens, are almost infallible indications that a second swarm will soon issue. They are occasionally so loud as to be heard at some distance from the hive. About a week after first-swarming, the Aipatian should place his ear against the hive, in the morning or evening, when the bees are still, and if the queens are "pipings," he will readily recognize their peculiar sounds. The young queens are all mature, at the latest, in sixteen days from the departure of the first swarm, even if it left as soon as the royal cells were
serting its abode the _second_ day after being hived, settled upon a tree. On examining the abandoned hive, _free_ young quecns were found lying dead on its bottom-board. The swarm was returned, and, the next morning, two more dead queeens were found. As the colony afterwards prospered, _eight_ queeens, at least, must have left the parent-stock in a single swarm!
Young quecns, whose ovaries are not burdened with eggs, are much quicker on the wing than old ones, and frequently fly much farther from the parent-stoek before they alight. After the departure of the second swarm, the oldest remaining queen leaves her cell; and if another swarm is to come forth, piping will still be heard; and so before the issue of each swarm after the first. It will sometimes be heard for a short time after the issue of the second swarm, even when the bees do not intend to swarm again. The third swarm usually leaves the hive on the second or third day after the second swarm, and the others, at intervals of about a day. I once had five swarms from one stock, in less than two weeks. In warm latitudes, more than twice this number of swarms have been known to issue, in one season, from a single stock.
In after-swarming, the queen sometimes re-enters the hive, after having appeared on the alighting-board. If she does this once, she will be apt to do it repeatedly, and the swarm, in each instance, will return to the mother-hive.
In the Aplary of a friend in Matamoras, when his first swarm issued, there was no tree for it to alight on. The wind was so strong, that the bees did not leave the vicinity of their hives, but began to settle on a hive near their own. Although the queen was secured, with a portion of her colony, a large part of the swarm entered the adjoining stocks. When these stocks swarned, although a tree had been set out for them to cluster on, the bees which had returned on the first occasion, did the same thing again, drawing with them the rest of their companions. The only way in which we could obtain a single swarm, was by coopering with _sheets_ all the hives in the Apiary as soon as one swarmed, and thus the bees, being unable to enter them, were compelled to alight! It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the folly of neglecting the old adage, "A stitch in time saves nine."
After-swarms, or casts--these names are given to all swarm after the first--seriously reduce the strength of the parent-stock ; since by the time they issue, nearly all the brood left by the old queen has hatched, and no more eggs can be laid until all swarming is over. It is a wise arrangement, that the second swarm does not ordinarily issue until all the eggs left by the first queen are hitched, and the young mostly sealed over, so as to require no further feeding. Its departure earlier than this, would leave too few laborers to attend to the wants of the young bees. If, after swarming, the weather suddenly becomes chilly, and the hive is thin, or the Apiarian continues the ventilation which was needed only for a crowded colony, the old stoek being unable to maintain the requisite heat, great numbers of the brood often perish.