PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 165 
so copiously, that those near the bottom, who support 
the weight of the rest, appear drenched with the mois- 
ture. ‘This intolerable heat determines the most irreso- 
lute to leave the hive. Immediately before the swarm- 
ing, a louder hum than usual is heard, many bees take 
flight, and, if the queen be at their head, or soon follows 
them, in a moment the rest rise in crowds after her into 
the air, and the element is filled with bees as thick as 
the-fallnmg snow. ‘The queen at first does not alight 
upon the branch on which the swarm fixes; but as soon 
as a group is formed and clustered, she joins it: after 
this it thickens more and more, all the bees that are in 
the air hastening to their companions and their queen, 
so as to form a living mass of animals supporting them- 
selves upon each by the claws of their feet. Thus they 
sometimes are so concatenated, each bee suspending its 
legs to those of another, as to form living chaplets?. 
After this they soon become tranquil, and none are seen 
in the air. Before they are housed they often begin to 
construct a little comb on the branch on which they 
alight®. Sometimes it happens that two queens go out 
with the same swarm; and the result is, that the swarm 
at first divides into two bodies, one under each leader ; 
but as one of these groups is generally much less nume- 
rous than the other, the smallest at last joins the largest, 
accompanied by the queen to whom they had attached 
4 Some critics have found fault with Mr. Southey for ascribing, in 
his Curse of Kehama, to Camdeo, the Cupid of Indian mythology, a 
bow strung with bees, The idea is not so absurd ds they imagine ; 
and the poet doubtless was led to it by his knowledge of the natural 
history of these animals, and that they form themselves into sirings 
or chaplets.—-See Reaum. v. é. xx. fi 3. > Reaumur, 615-644, 
