THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 183 
garden are of this ancient pattern. The old green 
hive is keeping well up to its reputation. Already 
it is the centre of a swirling crowd of bees, and, as 
you look, a dense black stream of them is pouring 
out of the entrance so fast and furiously that it is 
almost impossible to distinguish what they are. 
And the old wild trek-song is growing louder and 
deeper with every moment, a rich vibrant tenor 
note unlike any other sound in nature. There is 
no doubt at all of its import, as you stand in the 
wing-darkened sunshine, caught up in the excite- 
ment of it all, and feeling much as if you were 
facing a tearing sou’-west gale. Every bee of the 
twenty or thirty thousand volleying madly to and 
fro overhead, is singing her bravest and loudest. 
There is only one meaning to the whole gargan- 
tuan chorus. It is sheer jubilation melodised: a 
wild, glad song of freedom, as though not a bee 
amongst them had ever before set eyes on the 
sunshine and the wealth of an English May. 
The great door-key, a ponderous, antiquated 
piece of metal, beats out its clanging note, and the 
swarm lifts higher and higher into the blue. 
Gradually the sombre mist of bees draws closer 
together, looking now like a little dark cloud 
strayed from a forgotten summer storm. Now it 
sails slowly northward, and lightens, as the sun- 
light is caught by the beating wings as in a net of 
silver ; and now it veers away into the very eye of 
the sun, and changes into black, revolving tracery 
