One stock in fifteen may commence piping, yet send out no swarm. The bees will change their minds about coming out, and kill their queens, or allow the eldest one of them to destroy the others, or some other way, as they do not always swarm in such circumstances. But when the piping continues over twenty-four hours, I never knew _but one failure_! I have known a few (two or three) to commence this piping, while I supposed the old queen was yet present, and had not left the hive, on account of bad weather, but a swarm issued soon after. Also, three instances where I supposed the old queen lost, from some other cause than leading out a swarm, and the stock reared some young ones to supply her place. It occurred in or near the swarming season, and one or two issues was the consequence. One case was three weeks in advance of the season, and the swarm was about half the usual size. When a swarm has been out, and returned at the last of the swarming season, it is much more probable to re-issue, than if it depended on an old queen for a leader, that had not been out. Such will sometimes be a week or ten days later than others. Once I had the first swarm kept back by wet weather, and the second came out on the fifth day after; several other instances on the seventh and eighth; and one as late as the sixteenth, after the first. A RULE FOR THE TIME OF THESE ISSUES. This may be put down as a rule, that all after swarms _must_ be out by the eighteenth day from the first. I never found an exception, unless the following may be considered so: When a swarm left the middle of May, and another the first of July, seven weeks after, but two cases of this kind have come up, and these I consider rather in the light of first swarms, as they leave under the same circumstances, leaving the combs in the old stock filled with brood, queen-cells finished, &c. A stock may cast swarms in June, and a buckwheat swarm in August, on the same principle. WHEN IT IS USELESS TO EXPECT MORE SWARMS. Therefore, bee-keepers having but few stocks, will find it unnecessary to watch their bees when the last of the first swarms came out sixteen or eighteen days before. Much trouble may be thus saved by understanding this matter. During my early days in beekeeping, I wished for the greatest possible increase of stocks. I had some that had cast the first swarm, and soon after clustered out again. I vainly watched them for weeks and months, expecting another swarm. But had I understood the _modus operandi_, as the reader may now understand it, I should have been through with all my anxiety, as well as watching, in a fortnight. As it was, it lasted two months. I found no one to give me any light on this subject, or even tell me when the swarming season was over, and I came very near watching all summer! PLURALITY OF QUEENS DESTROYED.