146 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING, 
join their companions, by the slit which is close to 
their usual door, and within hearing of the fanners. 
This slit requires no very careful regulation in width, 
since it is dark, and unobserved from within, so that 
no bees escape by it. The ventilation of the hive 
is unimpeded, every drone passing at once forwards, 
and the returning bees clearing the entrance im- 
mediately. These appliances may be useful as drone- 
traps, to secure possible mischief-workers found in 
purchased stocks, e.g., or in temporarily preventing 
a swarm making off from a hive under suspicion ; but 
they are more likely to suit the tastes and needs of 
the amateur than to find favour with those who look 
to honey-production as a serious matter. 
Bees have the remarkable and, to me, unintelligible 
habit of swarming on spots that have been pre- 
viously selected by other lots of bees. The suggestion 
is made that the odour of the queen explains the 
peculiarity. To make the suggestion is easy, but to 
accommodate it to the facts is difficult or im- 
possible. Swarms are with me discouraged, and 
in some recent seasons I have had none ; yet, when 
such come off, notwithstanding the interval, during 
which the leaves* have dropped to be succeeded by 
* I freely admit that our sense of smell is relatively so extremely weak 
that we should err egregiously were we to judge by it of what the lower 
animals can accomplish ; e.g., it has recently been proved, by carefully- 
conducted experiment (Mr. G. F. Romanes), that a small fraction of a 
square inch of leather from the boot of the master is quite sufficient 
to establish an individually-recognisable trail for a setter dog; and, in 
addition, I would emphasise what every observ’er of bees must know, that 
the queen undoubtedly leaves an odour. On one occasion, I saw a fertile 
mother, lost by her swarm, resting on a leaf in a rose-bush ; and this, for 
several days after, almost continually had bees upon it. The fingers that 
have handled, or the knife that has dissected, a queen, are ver}' attractive ; but 
