THE PASTORAL BEES. 23 



grating to the woods, seems confirmed by the fact 

 that they will only come out when the weather is 

 favorable to such an enterprise, and that a passing 

 cloud, or a sudden wind, after the bees are in the air, 

 will usually drive them back into the parent hive. 

 Or an attack upon them with sand or gravel, or loose 

 earth or water, will quickly cause them to change 

 their plans. I would not even say but that, when the 

 bees are going off, the apparently absurd practice, now 

 entirely discredited by regular bee-keepers but still 

 resorted to by unscientific folk, of beating upon tin 

 pans, blowing horns, and creating an uproar generally, 

 might not be without good results. Certainly not by 

 drowning the " orders " of the queen, but by im- 

 pressing the bees as with some unusual commotion in 

 nature. Bees are easily alarmed and disconcerted, 

 and I have known runaway swarms to be brought 

 down by a farmer plowing in the field who showered 

 them with handfuls of loose soil. 



I love to see a swarm go off if it is not mine, 

 and if mine must go I want to be on hand to see the 

 fun. It is a return to first principles again by a very 

 direct route. The past season I witnessed two such 

 escapes. One swarm had come out the day before, 

 and, without alighting, had returned to the parent 

 hive some hitch in the plan, perhaps, or may be 

 the queen had found her wings too weak. The next 

 day they came out again, and were hived. But 

 something offended them, or else the tree in the 

 woods perhaps some royal old maple or birch, 



