The best and most effective plan is to buy a swarm as early in May as
possible. The farther off from your bee-garden the swarm is brought the
better. I have invariably found that a swarm from a hive a mile or two off
is preferable to a swarm from one of your own hives.
Send your bee-box or hive to some cottager who keeps bees, about the
end of April. Explain to her or him how the hive is to be adjusted on
receiving the swarm, and request that it be carried by hand, if possible,
the evening of the day on which the swarm was hived. Let a piece of gauze
be placed over the entrance of your hive, in order that the bees while
prisoners on the journey may have plenty of air; and when it arrives
place it quietly on your bee-shed, remove without noise the gauze, and
next morning, if it be fine, the bees will make themselves masters of the
situation, and make up their minds and arrange themselves to work in that
place in which their bee-master sets them.
Should the weather, the day after you have placed the hive containing
your swarm in your bee-shed, turn out wet and cold, push into the hive
through the entrance-hole a couple of sticks of barley-sugar, or more.
Half-a-pound only costs sevenpence, and you will get it all back in due
time; thereby the bees will start with renewed strength, as soon as the
weather clears up, most grateful for a little help when help is most
required. You need not fear lest by so doing you will encourage idleness
or mendicancy. Bees are not like street beggars. They do not want to be
dependent. All they ask is a little help at the beginning, to be able then
to help themselves. As soon as the sun shines the swarm will work hard
and without cessation, and by the middle of June you may find it right to
open communication with a super, or at least with a bell-glass, and find
yourself very soon rewarded with honey of exquisite flavour, in cells of
unrivalled whiteness.