[Footnote 1: Here let me be clearly understood. I admit that bees will sometimes swarm, with abundant room for work in their boxes. Yet I claim that on my plan all increase by swarming may be prevented without great trouble or perplexity, such as has heretofore attended all attempts to bring about this greatly to be desired object. If a person commences bee keeping, with a certain number of swarms in controllable hives, and in early spring gives the bees access to the hive boxes, and later, after they commence work in them, gives the bees access to the top boxes, giving them otherwise ordinary care, (except to feed if desired,) but a small proportion will swarm on the average yearly. Much the larger portion will work in the boxes without swarming out, and give a handsome yield of surplus box honey, the yield of course being governed by the amount of feed given them, and the yield from flowers, etc. But if increase of stocks is preferred, rather than surplus box honey--if the bees are not given access to the boxes, but confined in their labors to the brood section of the hive, being fed as directed, nearly every one will swarm, and swarm early.] If you wish your bees in controllable hives to swarm keep the partition in place at the sides of the brood section, and the honey board over the top; or in other words, keep the bees confined in their labors to the central or brood section of the hive. Now, if you wish them to swarm in any particular week of the swarming season, ten days before, remove the old queen. (It is well to kill her, and to do so, take with her about a pint of bees, and put them in a small miniature hive, six or eight inches square, with movable frames, like those in the central part of the controllable hive. Keep them shut in, twenty-four hours; then give them their liberty, and they will work the same as a large swarm through the summer; but will not winter. If such queens are known to be _very old_ it is best to destroy them when we take them from the swarm. _Keep only young, vigorous queens._) The bees in the hive, from which you have taken the queen, will in nearly every instance, construct queen cells _immediately_ to replace the loss of their queen. At the earliest possible moment, they seem to sense fully their loss, and to know that if they do not get another queen at once, their loss is irreparable. They usually will construct a number of cells, perhaps a half dozen or more. These will hatch in about ten days, and then swarms will issue.[2] [Footnote 2: Should any stock fail to swarm within two weeks from the time the queen is removed, at the end of that time, examine such stock, and if they have no queen they must be furnished with one. About one stock in twenty, deprived of its queen as directed, will fail to rear queens.]