NATURAL INCREASE. 
135 
impossible to believe that such retreats as those 
mentioned at page 30 could have been detected 
without some organised plan ? Moving the swarm 
to its destination during the absence of the scouts 
will leave the latter as lost bees, when they will 
probably re-enter the stock whence they originally 
came. In newly-settled countries this difficulty will 
require to be more carefully guarded against than in our 
own. Not a few instances are also on record of 
bees coming out and, without settling, making off to 
some distant, hollow tree, or taking direct possession 
of an unoccupied hive with,* or even without, combs, 
seeming to involve that the selection had actually 
been made before the day of swarming. On the 
other hand, circumstances show that the would-be 
colonists commonly commit the future to the keeping 
of the fitful goddess, and just await what may turn 
up. I well remember a very late swarm, of unknown 
ownership, presenting itself on the extremity of an 
upper limb of a tall chestnut, and, wetted by rain, 
swaying about, in a strong wind which sprang up, 
until the third day after settling, when I, in sheer 
pity, hived the nearly exhausted insects, which, under 
kind treatment, afterwards did well. The semi- 
abortive attempts made by unnoticed swarms at 
establishing a home in the open (page 30) can 
hardly be explained upon any other supposition. 
* A hive with empty combs is so exceedingly likely to be adopted by a 
swarm ihat such, it is said, have been used as decoys, with the most dis- 
reputable object of trapping swarms from neighbours. In one’s own 
apiary, such hives may possibly act as helpers, and were often recom- 
mended in the days when bees were left to take their own line with 
regard to colonisation. 
