THE RUXXING AT SWARMING TLME 



33 



joys. \\ hen did farmer ho}' or farmer 

 girl ever hear more deHghtedly the sum- 

 mons to break forth into Fourtli of Julv 

 ])anJemonii:m. aye. even demoniacal 

 racket. I loaded and hred as fast as 1 

 could and added my (luota (.f noise to 

 the din of jingling sleigh bells and the 

 rattling- of tin pans. I stood my ground. 

 I would not retreat so long as there was 

 any powder left. What though I be 

 sprinkled with sand, drenched with 

 water, and have the sunlight flashed in 

 my eyes from glistening tin pans and 

 heirloom mirrors? Only one other kind 

 of excitement do I recall as being any- 

 where near as deliriously delightful as 

 the hiving of sw^arming bees. That was 

 when occasionally the roof got on fire 

 around the chimney. If it had not been 

 for those occasional attic fires and the 

 swarming of the bees, the country boy's 

 pleasures in life would have been far 

 fewer. He would have had to content 

 himself with such quiet aft'airs as the 

 frog pond, with, at long intervals, the 

 excitement of breaking in a pair of steers 

 or a colt. It is true that sometimes it 

 did seem as if all these frantic endeav- 

 ors were wasted, because the bees had 

 a way of going high in air. perhaps re- 

 turning to a branch of the same tree, or 

 possibly alighting upon a little maple 

 only a few rods away. That maple 

 seemed to be a favorite position from 

 which to reconnoiter the field. 



P)Ut perhaps the reader vdio has not 

 had these delightful experiences, per- 

 haps the pathetic reminiscences of the 

 long ago, will ask why all this. Let it 

 be explained that for centuries bee-keep- 

 ers have accepted the theory, or shall I 

 say the myth, that swarming bees must 

 be thrown into confusion, it makes but 

 little dift'erence how. Any one of a mul- 

 tiplicity of methods was regarded as ef- 

 fective — water, sand, light, noise, any- 

 thing and everything out of the usual or- 

 der of things was regarded as destruc- 

 tive of the discipline supposed to exist, 

 and by which the queen, sometimes mis- 

 takenly called the king, led forth her 

 myriads of followers in flight. At the 

 ]:)resent time there is a lingering belief in 

 tlie minds of even skilled bee-keepers, 

 that such confusion in mid-air has an ef- 

 fect similar to that of pufiing smoke into 

 the hive. Smoke does not stuDefy. It 

 makes the bees think of something else 

 and turns their attention away from 

 stinging, while this confusion in mid-air 

 makes them think of an\thing and everv- 



thing except getting away, and I should 

 not wonder at that. I do not see how, 

 amidst the showers of sand and the dip- 

 perfulls of water, any bees, especially 

 those that were struck by the flying 

 solids and liquids, could have gone away. 

 On the contrary, they brought dead bees 

 to the ground. But what if out of some 

 ninety or one hundred thousand a few 

 thousand were killed? One must expect 

 that anv "reat war will have some vic- 



■HE KNOWS THEY CAME FROM MY 

 SKEPS.' " 



tims. Xot all can reach the promised 

 land of vinegar-washed hives. 



There are those wdio say that this 

 time-honored custom originated with 

 good King Alfred, and that it was done 

 in obedience to man's law, and not to the 

 biological or innate characteristics of the 

 bee. At any rate, after all these years, 

 King Alfred cannot dispute any charges 

 that may be laid on his royal shoulders. 

 So let us throw it all on him, and insist 

 that our country people have for centu- 

 ries been unwittingly perpetuating a 

 royal edict. 



This is the tradition. Once upon a 

 time, never mind the year, but we natu- 

 rally infer that it was in the beautiful 

 month of ]\Iay, an excited bee-keeper 

 rushed into the royal presence shouting. 

 "He lies, he lies. They are not David's 

 bees : they are mine. He knows they 

 came from my skeps. I know mv bees 

 when I see them, and they went straight 

 from my apiary down across the meadow 



