S6 A MANUAL OF BEE-KEEPING. 



or his Bees occasion. Should the swarm be lost and no 

 stranger hive them, they will often, after a few hours, 

 return to their old hive, apparently disgusted at the 

 neglect th^y have experienced. In this case, they may 

 be expected to emerge again on the first favourable 

 opportunity 



In the case of a colony which will persist in repeat- 

 edly swarming, or if the Bee-keeper fears a swarm will 

 issue and be lost, this may be prevented by clipping the 

 Queen's wings ; she may probably come out after this, 

 but will be found not far away, as she, of course, would 

 fall to the ground, her journey afterwards being limited 

 to the distance she can crawl. This plan was known to 

 Virgil, who says: — 



" The task is easy ; but to clip the wings 

 Of their high-flying arbitrary Kings." 



The ancients styled the Queen — the King. 



At the time of the old Queen's departure, the royal 

 cells are generally arriving at maturity ; in about a week 

 one of them hatches, and the natural impulse of the new 

 born Princess is to destroy all her unhatched sisters, in 

 which she is assisted by the Workers ; but if the hive be 

 in that prosperous condition that another exodus is 

 desirable, the Workers prevent this sororicide by setting a 

 guard over the unhatched Queens ; and when the reign- 

 ing Queen approaches them she is driven- unceremoni- 

 ously back; she resents this interference by a quick 

 succession of shrill angry sounds, not unlike the rapid 

 utterance of peep, peep, peep, which is accepted by the 

 imprisoned yoijng Queens as a kind of challenge, and 

 answered by them from the interior of their cells. This 

 is called piping, and when heard is a sure sign of an- 

 other swarm. The young Queens are all mature at the 



