308 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
inches long, with sealed brood and honey. This 
anomaly happened, too, within a few hundred yards 
of a mansion, the roof of which was yearly a favourite 
resort of swarms.” 
Some allusion will perhaps be looked for to the 
old-established custom of clipping the wings of the 
queen, with a view to the prevention of swarming. 
But bee-keepers who once come to understand and 
act upon the system of procuring swarms artificially 
at their own will and time, will find no occasion to 
resort to this device, which, as we have pronounced 
it in “The Apiary,” is surely “a clumsy proceeding 
at the best,” and may even lead to the total loss of 
the royal mother through her attempting to issue 
forth, and then falling to the ground. 
Transference of Swarms.—Many of the elaborate 
frame hives now in favour are unadapted or im- 
possible for use in the common process of hiving a 
swarm, and consequently a skep is employed in the 
first place, and a transfer must be made therefrom 
to the permanent hive. The skep with its swarm 
may be temporarily deposited on the ground, well 
sereened from the sun, and propped up with stones 
or sticks. A sheet may then be spread upon the 
ground in the most even spot that can be selected, 
and the frame hive, similarly propped up, will 
occupy a position near to and within one of the 
edges. The floor-board must be either removed or 
arranged to form an inclined plane up from the 
sheet into the hive. Mr. Cheshire’s plan is to place 
a piece of boarding, some three feet square (page 
170), upon the hive stand—not centrally, but with 
