BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
162 
chance/^ quite forgetting that the interior of the hive 
is in darkness. Another, telling of the distresses of 
these royal personages, explains that, “during all 
the days piping lasts, not one of the princesses ever 
closes an eye in sleep,” a statement which is fault- 
lessly accurate, since they have no eyelids. 
The swarm collects into a single compact cluster ; 
but the cast, which has often more than one point 
of congregation, may make two, or possibly three, 
masses, which are almost always sufficiently near to 
each other to be, at some point, in actual contact. 
If, in hiving, one queen is secured, so that the 
cluster remains while another queen, at least, is left, 
it is needless to strive to bring all into one mass, as 
in the case of first swarms ; and if we desire to 
secure or utilise the queens, it is better that the two 
lots stand temporarily side by side. 
The bee-keeper who is anxious rather to obtain 
honey than increase, may return his cast, even if he 
cannot determine the stock whence it came, by pick- 
ing off the accompanying queens as the cluster hangs, 
or by sprinkling and hiving, and then hunting out the 
queens, by shaking the bees round in the inverted 
skep, and beating them down from the sides by 
occasional blows outside from the hand, or by giving 
the top of the skep a bang on the ground. The poor 
Insects, so treated, will become terrified, and ab- 
solutely harmless, the queens being usually seen as 
they are turned to the surface. When all queens 
have been secured, the bees will cluster in the hive 
(now stood upright); but, twenty or thirty minutes 
later, discovering their condition, they return to the 
