CONTROLLED INCREASE. 
239 
honey has been gathered, or this will commence to 
run from the combs so soon as the skep is inverted ; 
w’hile our jarring will so shake it out that the bees 
may be hopelessly glued together, from which cause 
not only may we fail in obtaining a forced swarm, 
but the colony will be damaged, and perhaps even 
the queen killed. Let the operation be attempted 
on the following morning, when the limpid, newly- 
gathered nectar will have considerably thickened by 
evaporation, and, further, the process of sealing — i.e.i 
the capping of the store cells with thin w'axen lids — 
will have progressed during the night ; while, also, 
the temperature will have dropped, making the combs 
less liable to collapse. 
The great destruction of bees commonly attending 
driving competitions and similar exhibitions — such an 
unfortunate travesty of the humane system — is gene- 
rally due to the bees being strangers to the place in 
which the operation is necessarily undertaken, so that 
all escaping, being irretrievably lost, gather into little 
knots representing those that, under ordinary circum- 
stances, would retire to the decoy hive. Driving 
in the apiary, under usual conditions, hardly necessi- 
tates the loss of a single bee. 
Let us now return to the question of making an 
artificial swarm from a skep, which, of course, is treated 
as just described. During the ascent of the bees, we 
watch carefully for the queen, whose presence is 
essential to the success of the operation. A quick, 
or, rather, an educated, eye will rarely allow her to 
pass unnoticed : but, if she has not been seen, while 
the great majority of the bees have already made 
