THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 191 



of a wild colony. The work of the bee-master 

 affects almost every aspect of bee-life, enlarging 

 the scale and the scope of all that the bees attempt. 

 The result of this is seen not only in an increased 

 population and more extensive works, but in a 

 change in the very systems of life. Plans that 

 work very well on a small scale do not always 

 succeed on a large. The sanitary problems of a 

 city are necessarily very different from those of 

 a village, in principle as well as in degree. And 

 probably much of the ingenuity of system and 

 device observable in modern hive-life is directly 

 due to human agency, the new conditions intro- 

 duced by the bee-master serving to educate the 

 bees to greater effort and resource. 



The behaviour of these after-swarms offers a 

 curious contrast to that of the first one. If it were 

 possible to point to one fixed and invariable law 

 in bee-life, it would be to the fact that a prime 

 swarm will leave the hive only on a fine, warm 

 day, and generally about noon. But casts and 

 colts and fillies seem to take no count of time or 

 weather, issuing just as the mood besets them, 

 early or late, and caring nothing, apparently, for 

 the conditions abroad. It is even on record that 

 once a second swarm came off at midnight, when 

 the moon was at the full and the weather very 

 clear and warm. 



There seems altogether much more method in 

 the madness that seizes on a colony swarming for 



