THE PASTORAL BEES. TT 
I always feel that 1 have missed some good fortune 
if I am away from home when my bees swarm. 
What a delightful summer sound it is; how they come 
pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand 
bees each striving to get out first; it is as when the 
dam gives way and lets the waters loose ; it is a flood 
of bees which breaks upward into the air, and becomes 
a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft 
chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This 
way and that way they drift, now contracting, now 
expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some 
branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some 
other point, till finally they begin to alight in earnest, 
when in a few moments the whole swarm is collected 
upon the branch, forming a bunch perhaps as large 
as a two-gallon measure. Here they will hang from 
one to three or four hours, or until a suitable tree 
in the woods is looked up, when, if they have not 
been offered a hive in the mean time, they are up 
and off. In hiving them, if any accident happens 
to the queen the enterprise miscarries at once. One 
day I shook a swarm from a small pear-tree into a 
tin pan, set the pan down on a shawl spread beneath 
the tree, and put the hive over it. The bees presently 
all crawled up into it, and all seemed to go well for 
ten or fifteen minutes, when I observed that some- 
thing was wrong; the bees began to buzz excitedly 
and to rush about in a bewildered manner, then they 
took to the wing and all returned to the parent stock. 
On lifting up the pan, I found beneath it the queen 
with three or four other bees. She had been one of 
the first to fall, had missed the pan in her descent, and 
I had set it upon her. I conveyed her tenderly back 
to the hive, but either the accident terminated fatally 
