bt is, that the queen, unused to such long
and heavy flights, was obliged to alight from very exhaustion. It is
not very unusual for swarms to be thus found in remote fields, collected
upon a bush or branch of a tree.

When a swarm migrates to the woods in this manner, the individual bees,
as I have intimated, do not move in right lines or straight forward,
like a flock of birds, but round and round, like chaff in a whirlwind.
Unitedly they form a humming, revolving, nebulous mass, ten or fifteen
feet across, which keeps just high enough to clear all obstacles, except
in crossing deep valleys, when, of course, it may be very high. The
swarm seems to be guided by a line of couriers, which may be seen (at
least at the outset) constantly going and coming. As they take a direct
course, there is always some chance of following them to the tree,
unless they go a long distance, and some obstruction, like a wood, or
a swamp, or a high hill, intervenes--enough chance, at any rate, to
stimulate the lookers-on to give vigorous chase as long as their wind
holds out. If the bees are successfully followed to their retreat, two
plans are feasible: either to fell the tree at once, and seek to hive
them, perhaps bring them home in the section of the tree that contains
the cavity; or to leave the tree till fall, then invite your neighbors,
and go and cut it, and see the ground flow with honey. The former course
is more business-like; but the latter is the one usually recommended by
one's friends and neighbors.

Perhaps nearly one third of all the runaway swarms leave when no one
is about, and hence are unseen and unheard, save, perchance, by some
distant laborers in the field, or by some youth ploughing on the side
of the mountain, who hears an unusual humming noise, and sees the swarm
dimly whirling by overhead, and, may be, gives chase; or he may simply
catch the sound, when he pauses, looks quickly around, but sees nothing.
When he comes in at night he tells how he heard or saw a swarm of bees
go over; and, perhaps from beneath one of the hives in the garden a
black mass of bees has disappeared during the day.

They are not partial as to the kind of tree,--pine, hemlock, elm, birch,
maple, hickory,--any tree with a good cavity high up or low down. A
swarm of mine ran away from the new patent hive I gave them, and took
up their quarters in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree across an
adjoining field. The entrance was a mouse-hole