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Rh prevent it. One thing particularly exasperating about the after-swarm is that the virgin queen, being lighter bodied and lighter minded than the old queen, may take the occasion of swarming to get married, and go on her wedding journey; and thus is likely to lead her followers a mad chase and leave her proprietor so far in the rear that he loses the swarm entirely.

For the real reason of after-swarming we must look upon the colony as an individual; and as nature is wasteful in the production of individuals, these weak after-swarms are analogous to the weaklings among animals or plants, which must be sacrificed for some inscrutable reason on the altar of the preservation of the species.

PREVENTION OF AFTER-SWARMS

Mr. Hutchinson practises the following method: When the first swarm comes off he places it in a new hive like the old one, and puts the new hive on the exact site of the old one, while the latter is moved away just a little and faces in a different direction than before. The new hive has four or five frames with foundation starters, and on it is placed the super with partially filled sections from the old hive, with a queen-excluding board between the two; thus the new swarm, having no brood ready, will store in the supers until the brood-comb is built. Most of the bees from the old hive, returning from the field, will enter the new hive because the entrance to the old hive is turned away. The old hive is then turned