time the rapping began, the mass of the
bees with their queen will have ascended, and will hang clustered, just
like a natural swarm. The box with the expelled bees must now be gently
lifted off, and should be placed upon a bottom-board with a gauze wire
ventilator, so that the bees may be confined, and yet have plenty of
air. A shallow vessel or a piece of old comb containing water, ought to
be first placed on the bottom-board. If no gauze wire bottom-board is at
hand, the hive must be wedged up, so as to admit an abundance of air,
and be set in a shady place.

The hive from which the bees were driven, must now be set, without
crushing any of the bees, on its old spot, in the place of the decoy
hive, that all the bees which have returned from abroad, may enter.
Before this change is made, these bees will be running in and out of
the empty hive, (See p. 72,) but as soon as the opportunity is given
them, they will crowd into their well-known home, and if there are no
royal cells started, will proceed, almost at once, to construct them,
and the next day they will act as though the forced swarm had left of
its own accord. When the operation is delayed until about the season for
natural swarming, the hive will contain immature queens, if the bees
were intending to swarm, and a new queen will soon take the place of the
old one, just as in natural swarming. If it is performed too early, and
before the drones have made their appearance, the young queen may not be
seasonably impregnated, and the parent stock will perish.

It will be obvious that this whole process, in order to be successfully
performed, requires a knowledge of the most important points in the
economy of the bee-hive; indeed the same remark may be made of almost
any operation, and those who are willing to remain ignorant of the laws
which regulate the breeding of bees, ought not to depart in the least,
from the old-fashioned mode of management. All such deviations will only
be attended with a wanton sacrifice of bees. A man may use the common
swarming hives a whole life-time, and yet remain ignorant of the very
first principles in the physiology of the bee, unless he gains his
information from other sources; while, by the use of my hives, any
intelligent cultivator may, in a single season, verify for himself, the
discoveries which have only been made by the accumulated toil of many
observers, for more than two thousand years. The ease with which
Apiarians may