Speaking of virgins, I got this from the ABJ, August 1902:

All swarms having a young or virgin queen can be properly classed as after-swarms. When a prime swarm issues it generally leaves maturing queen-cells in the old hive, from which, when matured, a young queen leads out all after-swarms.

For convenience, all swarms except the one having the old or laying queen are called “after-swarms” by beekeepers, and from this explanation the readers may know what the term “after-swarms” means. As a rule, about six to eight days after the prime swarm has issued the first young queen emerges from her cell, and if after-swarming is considered by the bees to be the best economy for the colony, the other young queens are kept in their cells by a little knot of bees clustering on them at all times after said queens are heard to be gnawing at their cell-covers, so the lid of the cell can not be removed to let the queen out, her majesty being fed all the time through an aperture made by the gnawing of the imprisoned in mate in the royal cell. If further swarming is not considered “economy” by the bees, then all the other queen-cells are torn down after the young queens have been destroyed, so that the first which emerged is the only queen in the hive.

If the cells are protected as above, the first emerged queen seems to get into a rage, and utters shrill notes at intervals, sounding something like tee—tee—tee-tee, te, t, t, t, would sound uttered in this way, and called the “piping of the queen,” which is kept up for about two days, when the second swarm, or the first of the after-swarms issues. This piping of the queen is always heard if listened for before all after-swarms, or any case of a plurality of queens in a colony intending to send out a swarm. The queens kept back in their cells by the bees are growing in age and strength, the same as is the one having her liberty, they telling this by their trying to pipe the same as the one does that is out of her cell, which noise is termed “quahking;” and so it happens that, during the hurry and bustle of second swarming, one or two of these queens hastily finishes biting the cover off the cell and gets out with the swarm, in which case two or more queens are found with the swarm, as was the case with our querist, although it is a rare thing to see more than two or three queens with a second swarm, unless said swarm has been long delayed on account of bad weather. 

If a third swarm is to issue, the bees now cluster about the remaining royal cells having queens in them, the same as before, keeping all queens prisoners except one, which liberated queen scolds and pipes away, as did the one before, the others in the cells showing their anger back again by a chorus of quahking immediately after the first ceases piping, when, after the lapse of two days, or such a matter, the third swarm issues. 

As there are less bees in number at this issue than there were when the second swarm issued, and more mature queens held as prisoners, the queen-cells are quite generally vacated by the guard-bees; and queens, bees, and all rush out, and in such cases I have often counted as many as from 8 to 15 queens with one such swarm, though from one to five is the usual number. 

Occasionally a colony will send out a fourth, and sometimes a fifth swarm, though the latter is of very rare occurrence; and sometimes all of the young queens will leave their cells and go out with the last swarm, in which case the parent colony is hopelessly queenless, and dies from their inability to procure a queen, when, as soon as the bees are gone, the larvae of the wax-moth take possession of and destroy the combs, and the owner declares that the worms was what destroyed his bees. 

In the above I have tried to give a short insight into the mysteries of the swarming of bees, many points of which do not seem to be fully understood, even by those who have kept bees for several years. 

Two Queens with a Swarm—Mysteries of Swarming. 
G. M. DOOLITTLE. Onondaga Co., N.Y. 

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