season, may
be most certainly predicted as follows: Listen near the entrance of the
hive in the evening. If a swarm is coming forth the next day, the Queen
will be heard giving an alarm at short intervals. The same alarm may be
heard the next morning. The observer will generally hear two Queens at a
time in the same hive, the one much louder than the other. The one making
the least noise is yet in her cell, and in her minority. The sound emitted
by the Queens is peculiar, differing materially from that of any other
bee. It consists of a number of monotonous notes in rapid succession,
similar to those emitted by the mud-wasp when working her mortar and
joining it to her cells, to raise miss-wasps. If, after all, the weather
is unfavorable to their swarming two or three days while in this peculiar
stage, they will not be likely to swarm again the same season.

Two reasons, and two only, can be assigned why bees ever swarm. The first
is, want of room, and the second, to avoid the battle of the Queens. It is
indeed true that there are exceptions. Perhaps one in a hundred swarms may
come forth before their hive is filled with comb; but from nearly forty
years experience in their cultivation, I never saw an instance of it,
where the hive was not full of bees at their first swarming. When bees go
from the old stock to the tree without alighting, it is when they lie out
of the hive before swarming, and the embassy are sent forth before the
swarm leaves the old stock. When the first swarm comes forth, eggs, young
brood, or both, are left in the combs, but no Queen; for the old Queen
always goes forth with the swarm, and leaves the old stock entirely
destitute. Not a single Queen, in any stage of minority, is left in the
hive. The bees very soon find themselves destitute of the means of
propagating their species, (for the Queen is the only female in the hive,)
and immediately set themselves to work in constructing several royal
cells, (probably to be more sure of success,) take a grub (larva) from the
cell of a common worker, place it in the new-made royal cell, feed it on
royal jelly, and in a few days they a Queen. Now as the eggs are laid in
about three litters per week, the bees, to be still more sure of
succeeding in their enterprize, take maggots, differing in age, so that if
more than one Queen is hatched, one will be older than the others. This
fact accounts for hearing more than one Queen at the same time, because
one com