220 NATURAL SWARMING. 
to join her again. This happens oftenest with after-swarms, 
whose young queens, instead of exhibiting the gravity of an 
old matron, are apt to be frisking in the air. 
When the swarm is clustered so high that the sack can- 
not be raised to it on a pole, it may be carried up to the 
cluster, and the bee-keeper, after shaking the bees into it. 
may gently lower it, by a string, to an assistant below. 
432. When a colony alights on the trunk of a tree, or 
on anything from which the bees cannot easily be gathered 
in a basket, or in the sack, fasten a leafy bough, or acomb 
over them, and with a little smoke, compel them to ascend 
it. If the place is inaccessible, they will enter a well-shad- 
ed basket, inverted, and elevated just above the clustered 
mass. We once hived a neighbor’s swarm, which settled 
in a thicket, on the inaccessible body of a tree, by throw- 
ing water upon the bees, 80 as to compel them gradually 
to ascend the tree, and enter an elevated box. If proper 
alighting places are not furnished, the trouble of hiving a 
swarm will often be greater than its value. 
433. If the swarm is noticed, when it begins to issue 
from the parent hive, the practical bee-keeper often har- 
vests it without trouble, by catching the queen (100). 
Provided with a queen cage (536), he watches for her exit, 
and as she comes out, he seizes her and places her in the 
cage. He then removes the old hive, and places the new 
one, ready for the swarm, on its stand, with the caged 
queen on the platform. The swarm may alight, but as 
soon as the bees notice their loss, they will return, and will 
cluster around her; and the hiving of the swarm takes but 
afew minutes. In a circumstance of this kind, it is well to 
return the parent colony to its stand, after the swarm is 
hived, for, if entirely removed, it would lose all the bees 
that were in the field, when the swarm left, and would be 
too much weakened. 
434. To prevent primary swarms from escaping, some 
