CONTROLLED INCREASE. 
237 
upon their hive walls. Were this correct, it is pretty- 
evident that they would rather descend to the hive 
crown, where the combs are attached, and where, 
consequently, the jar is the least, and the relative dis- 
tances of the combs not interfered with. I take it 
to be a matter of instinct, which does not alter its 
method although the circumstances under ' which it 
works are reversed. Frightened bees instinctively 
run upwards^ in order to retreat from the edges 
and exposed portions of their combs, and reach their 
honey, and so save all they can of that wealth they 
dare no longer defend. We cheat them, in driving, 
by putting the honey beneath, while their unalterable 
instinct, forcing them upwards, brings them into the 
open, and carries them on until we have them sus- 
pended from the roof of our receiving skep as a 
swarm. If a skep or frame hive, in its natural 
position, be banged a few times, so as to vibrate 
the combs, the bees will be found above gorging 
themselves at the open honey-cells. 
The inversion of the hive is no essential part of 
the operation, and, with the skep, the impossibility of 
removing its crown is the only impediment to its 
being driven in situ, as the following example will 
illustrate. One of our swarms, in 1871, built so 
irregularly in an ordinary Woodbury hive that the 
removal of any single comb was impracticable. In 
order to accomplish the re-arrangement of the interior 
it was essential to lift out all the frames and combs 
in one mass, and this necessitated the previous removal 
of the bees. The crown-board (occupying the place 
of our present quilt) was taken off, the colony gorged. 
