Stocks in which the disease has not progressed too far, will generally swarm.
WHEN TO EXAMINE STOCKS THAT HAVE SWARMED.
Three weeks from the first swarm, will be the time to examine them. I make it a rule to inspect all my stocks at this period. It is easily done now, as about all the healthy brood (except drones) should be matured in that time. By perseverance in these rules, I allow no stocks to dwindle away until they are plundered by others. If all my neighbors were equally careful, this disease would probably soon disappear. This is like one careless farmer allowing a noxious weed to mature seeds, to be wafted by winds on the lands of a careful neighbor, who must fortify his mind to continual vigilance, or endure the injury of a foul pest. So with the successful apiarian; in sections where the disease has appeared (it has not in all), he must be continually on the watch; it is the price of success.
CARE IN SELECTING STOCK HIVES FOR WINTER.
Again, after the breeding season is over, in the fall, _every stock should be thoroughly inspected, and all diseased ones condemned for stock hives_. It is better to do it, even if it should take the last one. It would pay much better to procure others instead, that are healthy.
Persons wishing to eat the honey from such hives, will experience no bad effects from it, if they are careful to remove all the dead brood, as they take it out of the hive.
The greatest distance that I ever knew bees to go, and plunder a defenceless stock of its contents, was three-fourths of a mile. Very likely they would go farther on some occasions, but not often.
Careless bee-keepers, when their hives are thus robbed, feel regret, or are more often vexed at somebody--at the result of their carelessness. The person, keeping most bees in a neighborhood, must expect to be accountable for all effects of their ignorance, mismanagement, or carelessness, and consequent "bad luck;" when all the honey thus obtained, probably carries with it more mischief than can be eradicated in a twelvemonth, thereby giving the real cause of complaint to the other party.
Keeping bees good-natured, offers a pretty fair subject for ridicule: it seems rather too absurd to teach _a bee_ anything! Nevertheless, it is worth while to think of it a little. Most of us know that by injudicious training, horses, cattle, dogs, &c., may be rendered extremely vicious. If there is no perceptible analogy between these and bees, experience proves that they may be made ten times more irritable than they naturally would be.