MillerThousand AnswersBeekeepingQuestions.pdf - BioBees

THOUSAND ANSWERS 247but a clean hive. Your hives were, no doubt, all right, but it's apretty safe guess that the bees were uncomfortable for all that.Either they were too warm or had too little air. Likely both.When you hive a swarm see that it has abundant ventilation.Give it as large an entrance as you can. If practicable, it is agood plan to raise the hive an inch or so from the bottom-boardby putting blocks under the corners. Shove the cover forward soas to make an opening of half an inch, or an inch, at the backend. After two or three days you can lessen the ventilation ifyou think best. The hive should be in a shady, airy place. If youcannot give shade in any other way, cut an armful of long grass,put it on the hive, lay two or three sticks of firewood on it tokeep it from blowing away. Some make a practice of giving aframe of brood to the swarm. The bees think that it is such agood start toward housekeeping that they are unwilling to leave itwithout great provocation.Some secondary swarms leave because their queen has notyet mated, and they follow her when she goes out for her weddingflight. Nothing will hold such swarms except killing thequeen. Then they would return to the parent hive.Swarms, Moving.—Q. When is the best time to move a swarmafter it is hived?A. Right away after you get the bees of the swarm in thehive. Don't wait to get a few scattering bees in ;they can find theswarm where you put it, or else they can go back to the old hive.Swarm, Prime.—Q. How long after the prime swarm issuesforth does the young queen hatch?A. Ordinarily the first virgin leaves her cell about a weekafter the issue of the prime swarm. If, however, the swarm be delayeda day or more by bad weather, then the time of her emergenceafter the swarming will be lessened a day or more. It mayalso be increased in case the prime swarm issues before the firstqueen-cell issealed.Swarms, Returning.—Q. What is the best manner of returninga swarm to the hive from whence it issued, so as to make itstay, no further increase being desired?A. It doesn't matter how you return the swarm; it will stay aswell for one kind of returning as another. It is the condition ofthings in the hive that decides whether the swarm will issueagain, and it isn't the easiest thing in the world to prevent it. Theold-fashioned way was to return the swarm every time it issued.