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 
