The Swarming Behaviour of Honeybee Colonies Kept in Small Hives and Allowed to Outgrow Them

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Abstract
Fourteen small colonies were put into small hives and allowed to outgrow them. Four failed to do so before the last week of June, and these neither swarmed nor had occupied queen cells. The other ten had occupied queen cells and eight of them swarmed, all with their old queens; six had sealed queen cells and two had unsealed queen cells containing larvae. In one of the two colonies that outgrew its hive early but did not swarm, a young queen emerged and superseded the old one; in the other colony no queen cells hatched. The incidence of swarming, and of old queens in swarms, was greater than some other authors have found who used colonies with unrestricted hive space. Also, the amount of queen rearing associated with the swarming was greater than that found in an earlier experiment in which colonies were induced to swarm by sudden overcrowding. At least five of the present colonies that started queen rearing, including the one that replaced its queen and three of those that swarmed, destroyed the contents of queen cells at various times.