224 NATURAL SWARMING. 



or a few seconds should be allowed to elapse before they are 

 gently liberated in front of the hive. 



431. The sack is preferable to a box or a basket, as the 

 latter do not close readily, and a number of the bees are apt 

 to fly back to the clustering spot, befo~e they are emptied in 

 front of their intended abode. 



If this happens, the process of hiving must be repeated, 

 unless the queen has been secured, when they will quickly form 

 a line of communication with those on the sheet. If the queen 

 has not been secured, the bees will either refuse to enter the 

 hive, or will speedily come out and take wing, to join her 

 again. This happens oftenest with after-swarms, whose young 

 queens, instead of exhibiting the gravity of an old matron, 

 are apt to be frisking in the air. 



It is a mistake to suppose that a swarm will not enter a 

 hive unless the queen is with them. If some start for it, the 

 others will speedily follow, all seeming to take it for granted 

 that the queen is somewhere among them. Even after they 

 begin to disperse in search of her, they may often be induced 

 to return, by pouring out a fresh lot of bees, which, by enter- 

 ing the hive with fanning wings, cause the others to believe 

 that the queen is coming at last. 



When the swarm is clustered so high that the sack cannot be 

 raised to it on a pole, it may be carried up to the cluster, and 

 the bee-keeper, after shaking the bees into it, may gently lower 

 it, by a string, to an assistant below. 



433. When a colony alights on the trunk of a tree, or on 

 anything from which the bees cannot easily be gathered in a 

 basket, or in the sack, fasten a leafy bough, ,or a comb over 

 them, and with a little smoke, compel them to ascend it. If 

 the place is inaccessible, they will enter a well-shaded basket, 

 inverted, and elevated just above the clustered mass. We once 

 hived a neighbor's swarm, which settled in a thicket, on the 

 inaccessible body of a tree, by throwing water upon the bees, 

 so as to compel them gradually to ascend the tree, and enter 

 an elevated box. If proper alighting places are not furnished, 



