NATURAL INCREASE. 
127 
are settled, and the uproar of the previous minutes at 
an end. 
The fashion of rattling keys and frying-pans is a 
thing of the past. The ancient ringing of bells and 
making of noises may have had no object but to 
warn neighbours, and to sustain proprietorship in the 
rising swarm ; but I believe that the old idea, now 
almost universally discredited, that these noises dis- 
posed the bees to settle, is accurate. The investiga- 
tion of undoubted auditory organs in the antennae 
(pages 107, 108, Vol. I.), the difference between the 
flight-note of the queen and that of the worker, ex- 
periments made on small swarms and divided stocks, 
and the observation that bees choose quiet times — 
Sundays notably — for their departure, all point in one 
direction. Langstroth tells us that, if a swarm is 
disposed to take a longer flight than desirable before 
settling, it may be brought to earth by throwing dust 
among the intending fugitives ; while he and others 
also have stated that flashing a sunbeam from a 
looking-glass amongst them will have the same effect. 
I have used a large garden syringe, as I believe with 
advantage, in this relation. 
When the swarm is once fairly settled, our object 
should be to keep it cool, for the universal excitement 
and close packing of the cluster raise the tempera- 
ture to an almost unbearable extent, and the direct 
rays of the sun may drive it to a new and, for us, 
most inconveniently lengthened flight. If the settling- 
place is in a bush, and we cannot proceed to hive 
immediately^ cover the bush with a sheet, and, in 
very hot weather, sprinkle this, and the bees also, with 
