04/20/2024
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circa. 1887 ~ Clarke's Swarm Catching Device
Swarming and Swarm Catchers
For one, I have settled down to the belief that swarming: is to accepted as one of the unchangeable conditions of bee-life. In common with many others, I hailed the plan of division sometimes called "artificial swarming," and practiced it long: enough to become convinced that it was indeed artificial and abnormal. I never had a stock of bees that was thus started on an independent career, whose energy, industry, and efficiency would begin to compare with those qualities as displayed by a natural swarm. I have also tried clipping the queen's wing, and abandoned it for several reasons. First and foremost, it is a fraud on the bees. Nature is constructed on honest principles, and I believe that even a stock of bees resents deception and imposture. They start for that grand gala-time which Nature provides them once a year; and instead of having a holiday excursion they are obliged to turn back in dire confusion and disappointment. It is their annual celebration of independence; and man, by wicked artifices, prevents their enjoyment of it. They feel and act as if balked, which they are, and no mistake. Again, dissatisfaction springs up in the hive. They become disloyal toward their queen. They don't want a leader who can't lead. Something is the matter with the queen. They cabal, scheme, and finally conclude to supersede the reigning monarch. I have no doubt many of our queen-troubles have arisen from clipping and otherwise disturbing the queen. Furthermore, it is very difficult for me to handle a queen without hurting her. I have not that delicacy of touch, nor that control of my nerves, which is necessary for handling such soft bodied little creatures. I think real injury often done to queens in the process of clipping impairs their efficiency, and leads to their being superseded. I forbear discussing other preventives of swarming, lest this article should become too long.
Via. Historical Honeybee Articles - Beekeeping History
Taking it for granted that we are going to let our bees swarm within due limits, we ought to arrange accordingly. First, we want a spacious bee-yard, or, rather, bee-garden, for I don't believe in a bee-yard, like a door-yard, devoid of trees and shrubbery. An apiary should be located on a roomy lot, and be environed by evergreens and low growing deciduous trees. My experience has been, that bees prefer Norway spruces and apple-trees to all others, for clustering on. In my lot they have had a choice of maples, willows, mountain ash, chestnut, plum, cherry, pear, and various other trees, together with lilac, syringas, and other shrubs, also pines, balsams, and other evergreens; and in over twenty years they have invariablychosen Norway spruces or apple-trees to cluster on. I may add, that in all that time they have never gone outside my own lot of about an acre in extent, to find a clustering place, except once.
When things are handy for cutting off the bough on which the cluster hangs, that is a nice way of getting possession of your swarm. But it has its objections. A properly trimmed Norway spruce is disfigured by the removal of an important bough, and the symmetry of an apple tree is spoiled by the cutting off here and there a large branch. It is remarkable what a tendency there is in swarms to pick out certain trees, and they soon get cut out of all shape by sawing off limbs. Besides this, it is not easy to saw off a limb without jarring it; and sometimes at the critical moment of separation between bough and trunk there is a serious jar, and, lower half the cluster parts company with the rest; or the whole swarm becomes disorganized, and, quick as wink, is "over the woods and far away." If you get your bough and cluster safely to the new hive, you are not beyond the reach of mishap. The queen may rise in the air again instead of going into the hive, and then it is "love's labor lost."
Various devices have been suggested for taking swarms, most of which I have tried and found wanting in some particular or other. I can not discuss them in detail here, for I find that this article is getting lengthy, and the special object of it is not yet reached. I want to describe and illustrate a very simple method of taking swarms, which I have evolved during the season just passed, and found more satisfactory than any other with which I have experimented. The idea of it was evolved from an apparatus figured in the A B C of Bee Culture, page 336, as follows:
The drawback to this device is its being horizontal. You must climb a ladder, get even with the cluster, and in such a free position that you can readily operate the handle; for unless, as described in the ABC, you instantly twist the bag so as to confine the bees, a large portion of them will get away, and, in all probability, along with them you will lose the queen. This drawback is obviated by the use of a wooden handle, as shown in Fig. 2. The construction of the swarm-catcher is also shown, together with the manner in which it is shoved under the swarm. The rod is made in joints, the two lower joints being of stout bamboo, and the upper one of tough ash. Fig. 2 shows the device with the lower joint removed, and which I have so far found quite long enough for such swarms as I have taken with it. As soon as the swarm has dropped into the bag, slant the rod a little, give it one twist, and the bees are all your prisoners. Not a solitary one of them can escape, and the bag lies against the rod snug and secure (see Fig. 3), to await your convenience. If the hive is not quite ready for the reception of the bees they can wait a little while. The bag being made of cheese-cloth, or some such porous material, they will not smother. When all is ready, their infallible entrance into the hive may be secured by the hoop of the bag being so placed that the bees must escape into the hive or not at all.
The superiority of this plan over all swarming boxes, even those with a frame of comb in them, lies in this— that you are not dependent on the will of the bees whether they enter or not. Bees are freaky little creatures. You poke a box among them as the cluster is forming; and if they do not take a notion to enter, you must secure them in some other way. Or if you are too persistent in obtruding your box upon them they abscond, and so get rid of the annoyance. Or, again, you coax them into your box, and then lose them at the entrance of the hive.
I have tried the method— I do not know whose it is, but I first saw it practiced at Mr. Heddon's — of shaking the cluster into a light box or large tin pan, and instantly covering the bees with a muslin or linen cloth. It is better than some of the modes practiced, but not wholly satisfactory to me. You can not always get a good fair shake; and if you do, perhaps fail in getting the cover on properly, or after it is on it is brushed aside while you are climbing down from the tree; and, lastly, perhaps there is a miss in getting the queen out of the box or pan into the hive.
It will, perhaps, be said that my device will answer very well where the cluster hangs in a nice convenient shape as in the pictures; but when it gets among small limbs of trees, and in awkward places, it will not work. To which I reply, that apple trees with properly trimmed open heads and Norway spruces with symmetrical branches, offer no chance for the tangling up of swarms we sometimes witness. There will be here and there an exceptional case; but an apiary having a right environment, such as described at the outset of this article, will give off swarms that will cluster in a ship-shape form, nearly every time. If we surround our bees with high trees, or thickety trees, or plant the apiary where there are no trees at all, we must, of course, take the consequences. Swarms like, above all things, to cluster on trees; and if we provide such as are convenient for ourselves as well as them, they will use them, so reducing our trouble and risk of loss to the minimum point. -W. F. Clarke.
Source:
Gleanings in Bee Culture, circa. 1887, September, Pages 651-652
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/57116 /594/mode/1up
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