78 BEES. 



with her or eke the young queen had been liberated 

 in the interim, and one of them had fallen in combat, 

 for it was ten days before the swarm issued a second 

 time. 



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

 house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be nc 

 doubt that they look up new quarters either before 

 or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees ar@ 

 wild bees and incapable of domestication ; that is, the 

 kistinct 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 seems to have n<* 

 appreciable effect towards their final, permanent do- 

 mestication. That every new swarm contemplates 

 migrating to the woods, seems confirmed by the fact 

 that they w T ill 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 gen- 

 erally, might not be without good results* Certainly 

 not by drowning the " orders " of the queen, but by 

 impressing the bees as with some unusual commotion 

 in nature. Bees are easily alarmed and disconcerted, 

 and I have knowTi runaway sw r arms to be brought 

 down by a farmer ploughing in the field who show- 

 ered them with handfuls of loose soil. 



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



