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. 



482. When a colony alights on the trunk of a tree, or 

 on anjthing from which the bees cannot easily be gathered 

 in a basket, or in the sack, fasten a leafy bough, or a comb 

 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, so 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 

 a few 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 



