Or an attack upon them with sand or gravel, or loose earth or water,
will quickly cause them to change their plans. I would not even say
but that, when the bees are going off, the apparently absurd practice,
now entirely discredited by regular bee-keepers but still resorted to
by unscientific folk, of beating upon tin pans, blowing horns, and
creating an uproar generally, might not be without good results.
Certainly not by drowning the "orders" of the queen, but by impressing
the bees as with some unusual commotion in nature. Bees are easily
alarmed and disconcerted, and I have known runaway swarms to be brought
down by a farmer ploughing in the field who showered them with handfuls
of loose soil.
I love to see a swarm go off--if it is not mine, and if mine must go I
want to be on hand to see the fun. It is a return to first principles
again by a very direct route. The past season I witnessed two such
escapes. One swarm had come out the day before, and, without
alighting, had returned to the parent hive--some hitch in the plan,
perhaps, or may be the queen had found her wings too weak.
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