On transferring swarms

This operation should never be effected by compulsion.

First method. Insert drawer N into the chamber of the hive, to be transferred as early as the first of May. If the bees fill the drawer, they will recede from the lower apartment and winter in the drawer. As early in the spring as the bees carry in bread plentifully on their legs, remove the drawer, which will contain the principal part of the bees, to an empty hive. Now remove the old hive a few feet in front, and place the new one containing the drawer where the old one stood. Now turn the old hive bottom up. If there are any bees left in the old hive, they will soon return and take possession of their new habitation.

Second method. Take drawer N, well filled by any hive the same season, insert the same into the chamber of the hive, to be transferred in September, (August would be better.) If the bees need transferring, they will repair to the drawer and make the same their winter quarters. Then proceed in the spring as directed in the first method.

Remarks.

This management should excite a deep interest in every cultivator, both in a temporal and moral point of view. Temporal, because the lives of all the bees are preserved; moral, because we are accountable to God for all our acts. We are not to be justified in taking the lives of animals or insects, which are but lent blessings, unless some benefit to the owner can be derived from their death, which will outweigh the evils resulting from such a sacrifice. Duty compels me to protest in the strongest terms and feelings, against the inhuman practice of taking the lives of the most industrious and comforting insects to the wants of the human family by fire and brimstone.

When bees have occupied one tenement for several years, the combs become thick and filthy, by being filled up with old bread and cocoons, made by the young bees when transformed from a larva to the perfect fly.

Bees always wind themselves in their cells, in a silken cocoon, or shroud, to pass their torpid and defenceless (chrysalis) state. These cocoons are very thin, and are never removed by the bees. They are always cleaned immediately after the escape of the young bees, and others are raised in the same cells. Thus a number of bees are raised, which leaves an additional cocoon as often as the transformation of one succeeds that of another, which often occurs in the course of the season. Now in the course of a few years the cells become so contracted, in consequence of being thus filled up, that the bees come forth but mere dwarfs and sometimes cease to swarm. Combs are rendered useless by being filled up with old bread, which is never used except for feeding young bees. A greater quantity of this bread is stored up yearly than is used by them, and in a few years they have but little room to perform their ordinary labors. Hence the necessity of transferring them, or the inhuman sentence of death must be passed upon them, not by being hung by the neck until they are dead, but by being tortured to death by fire and brimstone.

It is obvious to every cultivator that old stocks should be transferred. I have repeatedly transferred them in the most approved manner, by means of an apparatus constructed for that purpose; but the operation always resulted in the loss of the colony afterwards, or a swarm which would have come from them. When it is necessary to transfer a swarm, insert drawer N into their chamber in the spring, say the first of May. If they till the drawer, let it remain there; if they need to be changed to a new hive, they will recede from the lower apartment and make the drawer their winter quarters, which should remain until warm weather has so far advanced as to afford them bread. Then they may be removed to an empty hive, as directed in the Rule. Now the drawer contains no bread, and should remain in the old stock until the bees can provide themselves with a sufficient quantity of that article to feed their young bees with; for bread is not collected early enough and in sufficient quantities to feed their young as much as nature requires. If the bees fail in filling the drawer, one should be used that is filled by another swarm.