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[June-September 
honey bees. Thus the swarm of bees we took to the island was forced 
to adopt the nestboxes we provided, and this simplified observing 
events at both the swarm’s cluster site and future nest site. Besides 
this island work, we made one preliminary measurement of swarm 
flight velocity during July 1979 at the Dyce Laboratory, Cornell 
University. 
Swarm Preparation. Artificial swarms were prepared from colonies 
at Dyce Lab using the standard techniques described by Seeley 
(1977). The genetic composition of each of these swarms was a 
mixture of the various honey bee races imported for American api¬ 
culture. However, the bees were light brown and so apparently were 
primarily of Apis mellifera lingustica (Italian bee) stock. The 
swarms weighed about 1400 g and so contained approximately 
11,000 bees, a typical size for natural honey bee swarms (Fell et al. 
1977). 
Experimental Layout and Recording Techniques. We positioned 
the Appledore Island swarm on the island’s western shore between 
Babb’s Cove and Pepperrell Cove. We forced the swarm to cluster 
on a wooden cross (150 cm high with a 46-cm-long cross member) 
by confining the swarm’s queen in a Benton mailing cage for queens, 
lashing this to the cross, and then releasing the swarm’s workers. 
When they were fully clustered around the caged queen, we 
uncorked her cage so she could later fly away with the swarm. A 
1-liter feeder jar filled with a 50% sucrose solution provided a con¬ 
stant food supply for the swarm. 
We observed the island swarm perform two complete flights to a 
new nest site. Unless stated otherwise, the observations reported 
below are based on this swarm’s second flight. The first flight was to 
a 5-frame hive placed 350 m away in the storage shed behind the 
Coast Guard building. After making this flight, the swarm was 
carried in the hive back to the wooden cross, its queen was recaged, 
and its workers were repositioned on the cross. The second flight 
followed the same line as the first, but continued along it for a 
considerably greater distance, approximately 580 m. The second 
flight’s nest site was a 40-liter bait hive (Morse and Seeley 1978) 
placed inside a small, lean-to shelter beside Devil’s Glen on the 
easternmost point of the island. 
We measured the Appledore swarm’s flight velocities by laying 
out a series of 13 stakes spaced 30 m apart starting from the wooden 
cross and continuing out along the line leading to the nest sites. This 
