682 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
EDITOR OF “A B C AND X Y Z OF BEE CULTURE’ HANDLING BEES: A COMFORTABLE 
POSITION 
FOR ALL-DAY WORK 
Note that the left arm that supports the weight of the frames rests comfortably on the knee. 
Photo from “A B C and X Y Z of Bee Culture,” by A. I. and E. R. Root 
adventure. Swarms do sometimes start 
out without a queen accompanying them, 
but they usually go back to the hive, 
after a time, to try it again next day. If 
she does not go then, nor at the next 
attempt, they often wait until they can 
rear a new queen, and then go off with 
her. After we were pretty well satisfied 
that this is the correct idea of their plan, 
a little circumstance seemed to upset 
it all. 
A neighbor, wanting to make an ob- 
servatory hive, drummed perhaps a quart 
of bees from one of his old hives. As 
he had no queen, we gave him a black 
one, taken from a colony purchased sev- 
eral miles away. We mention this to 
show that the queen had never been out 
of the hive in the location which it then 
occupied. 
After a day or two this neighbor in- 
formed us that we had played a fine 
trick on him, for our queen had gone 
home and taken his quart of bees with 
her. We told him it was impossible, for 
she had never been out of the hive, ex- 
