SWARMINa AND HIVING. 149 



and there is reason to dread a desertion, the bees may be 

 carried into the cellar, and confined in total darkness, until 

 towards sun-set of the third day after they swarmed, being 

 supplied in the mean time with water and honey to build 

 their combs. 



If a colony decides to go, they look upon the hive in 

 which they are put as only a temporary stopping place, and 

 seldom trouble themselves to build any comb in it. If the 

 hive is so constructed as to permit inspection, I can tell by 

 a glance whether bees are disgusted with their new resi- 

 dence, and mean before long to clear out. They not only 

 refuse to work with that energy so characteristic of a new 

 swarm, but they have a peculiar look which to the expe- 

 rienced eye at once proclaims the fact that they are staying 

 only upon sufferance. Their very attitude, hanging as they 

 do with a sort of dogged or supercilious air, as though they 

 haled even so much as to touch their detested abode, is 

 equivalent to an open proclamation that they mean to be 

 off. My numerous experiments in attempting from the mo- 

 ment of hiving, to make the bees work in observing hives 

 exposed to the full light of day, instead of keeping them as I 

 now do in darkness for several days, have made me quite fa- 

 miliar with all their graceless, do-nothing proceedings before 

 their departure. Bees sometimes abandon their hives very 

 early in the Spring, or late in Summer or Fall. They ex- 

 hibit all the appearance of natural swarming ; but they leave, 

 not because the population is crowded, but because it is either 

 so small, or the hive so destitute of supplies, that they are 

 discourdged or driven to desperation. I once knew a colo- 

 ny to leave the hive under such circumstances, on a spring- 

 like day in December ! They seem to have a presentiment 

 that they must perish if they stay, and instead of awating 

 *13 



