14 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



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 

 with her, or else the young queen had been liberated 

 in the interim, and one of them had fallen in com- 

 bat, for it was ten days before the swarm issued a 

 second time. 



No one, to my knowledge, has ever seen the bees 

 house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be no 

 doubt that they look up new quarters either before 

 or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are 

 wild bees and incapable of domestication; that is, 

 the instinct to go back to nature and take up again 

 their wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated. 

 Years upon years of life in the apiary seem to have 

 no appreciable effect towards their final, permanent 

 domestication. That every new swarm contemplates 

 migrating 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 



