ock is prepared to swarm, if it swarm at
all that season, the honey-harvest is almost over, and the new colony
will seldom be able to gather enough for its own use, so that unless
fed, it must perish the succeeding Winter. Bee-keeping with colonies
feeble in the Spring, is most emphatically nothing but "folly and
vexation of spirit."

I have shown how the bee-keeper, with a strong stock-hive which has
swarmed early and but once, may in a favorable season realize handsome
profits from his bees. If the parent stock throws a second swarm, then,
as a general rule, unless this swarm was very early, and the honey
season good, if managed on the ordinary plan, it will seldom prove of
any value. It will almost always perish in the Winter, if it does not
desert its hive in the Fall, and the family from which it issued, will
not only gather no surplus honey, (unless it was secured before the
first swarm issued,) but will very often perish likewise. Thus the
inexperienced owner who was so delighted with the rapid increase of his
colonies, begins the next season with no more colonies than he had the
year before, and has very often lost all the time he has bestowed upon
his bees. I can, to be sure, on my plan, prevent the death of the bees,
and can build up all the feeble colonies, so as to make them strong and
powerful: but only by giving up all idea of obtaining a single pound of
honey. From the first swarm, I must take combs containing maturing
brood, to strengthen my weak swarms, and this first swarm however
powerful or early, instead of being able to store its combs with honey,
will be constantly tasked in building new combs to replace those taken
away, so that when the honey harvest closes, it will have scarcely any
honey, and must be fed to prevent it from starving. Any man who has
sense enough to be entrusted with bees, can, from these remarks,
understand exactly why it is impossible to multiply colonies rapidly in
any one season, and yet obtain from them large supplies of honey. Even
the doubling of stocks in one season, will very often be too rapid an
increase, if the greatest quantity of spare honey is to be obtained from
them; and when the largest yield of honey is desired, I much prefer to
form, in a way soon to be described, only one new stock from two old
ones; this will give even more from the three, than could have been
obtained from the two, on the ordinary non-swarming plan.

I would very strongly dissuade any but