1882-83.] Edinburgh Naturalists Field Club. 69 



there are young queens being reared, one of which will be able to 

 take the place of the old queen who had left. As perhaps many of 

 our members may have never witnessed the process of swarming, 

 I will give a brief account of my own swarm last June, — for, though 

 I have hived perhaps over 100 swarms, I had never before actually 

 seen the queen leave the hive on these occasions, and I much 

 wished to do so. I knew the Bees were ready to swarm. There 

 are manifestations of this well known to Bee-keepers ; and after 

 several wet days, the morning of the 15th June opened with bright 

 sunshine, so about 10 o'clock I posted myself close to the hive, and 

 kept a sharp look-out, and happily had not been long there before I 

 saw the queen walk out of the hive, pause for a few moments on 

 the landing-board, and then take flight. To my surprise, a full 

 minute or more elapsed before the rush of Bees to the mouth of .the 

 hive took place : then out they came, as they always do, with that 

 helter-skelter speed, as one writer describes it, as though their 

 lives depended on their expedition ; and as you watch the living 

 stream tumbling over each other in their haste to get out, you 

 wonder how the hive could possibly hold so many. The air was 

 then full of them, and they seemed to be long in finding their 

 queen, and so tired with flying that they settled thickly over the 

 grass, on the wall of the garden and house, and great numbers on 

 myself, and it was impossible to move without treading on some. 

 However I saw the queen not far from me walking up the wall, 

 and soon there was the joyous hum, so well known to Bee-keepers, 

 as the Bees all rose and congregated round her in a dense mass on 

 the wall. I then placed my bar-framed hive above the cluster of 

 Bees, with one edge resting on the wall, and the other supported 

 on a stake from the ground, and successfully hived them. 



The custom of " ringing Bees " by beating the shovel with the 

 poker when a swarm has issued was very general in my younger 

 days, and is still practised in many rural districts in England, 

 from an idea that the Bees would not settle unless this were done. 

 Two reasons have been assigned for the custom, — one, that you 

 gave your neighbours notice that you had a swarm on the wing, 

 and so were at liberty to follow them ; another, that it was an imi- 

 tation of thunder, and that during an impending storm the Bees 

 would be more ready to settle and get under shelter. It is gener- 

 ally considered lawful, both here and in England, to follow a swarm 

 on to your neighbour's projDerty to hive them, and such is the 

 universal custom, but whether you are strictly within the law is 

 somewhat doubtful. A circumstance occurred last summer in Eng- 

 land which seemed likely to bring this point to an issue. A swarm 

 belonging to a Mr Thomson settled in his neighbour's garden, such 

 neighbour being one of the fair and gentle sex, though the latter 

 quality was not very apparent in this instance, for seeing the clus- 



