THE PASTORAL BEES. 77 



I always feel that I 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 

 •lam gives way and lets the waters loose ; it is a fl< 

 i 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 excitei 

 and to rush about in a bewildered manner, then they 

 took to the wing and all returned to the parent stock. 

 Dn 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 



