NATURAL INCREASE. 
139 
return. Perhaps their queen has defective wings, and 
is unable to fly. The fact that, in these cases, the 
bees do occasionally cluster, raises the question, Is 
the queen the predisposing cause of clustering ? I 
decidedly incline to the supposition that the bees are, 
in such cases, the victims of a contagious error, started, 
perhaps, by a goodly number settling at one spot, 
which error cannot be dispelled until all have quietly 
collected; and that, normally, the queen is the cause 
of clustering, in the sense that she is tempted or 
conducted along to the chosen spot, some settling 
first, to give her encouragement. She joins imme- 
diately, and continually rises to the surface of the 
mass, as external layers are added to it. On two 
or three occasions I have actually witnessed this order 
of procedure. In the event of a threatened return, 
or when the bees, after issuing, continue in great 
commotion without decidedly settling, search may be 
made for the mother on the ground in the neigh- 
bourhood of the hive, where she will often be found, 
accompanied by half a dozen or a dozen of her 
children. Placing her upon a convenient twig, in the 
spot in which the bees are most dense, they will 
probably soon gather around her ; and this will they 
equally do if she be retained in the hand, though 
perhaps few would trust sufficiently the harmlessness 
of the experiment to try it. By removing the hive 
whence the swarm has been thrown, and putting in 
its place an empty one, and laying the queen near 
the entrance after caging her (see “Queen Cage”), 
nearly all trouble is avoided. The bees, returning, 
find the queen, and gather about the cage, when she 
