Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/173

Rh "I'd like to get a near view of these bees," said Russ, "but I don't fancy getting too close. It's no fun to be stung eight or ten times."

"I'll lend you my hat," offered one of the men and, thus protected, Russ moved his camera closer and got a fine view of the swarm of honey-making insects as they alighted on the low branch of an apple tree.

"Git the hive, now, sir!" called another of the men, and while the hive was brought up, to receive the bunch of bees when they should be knocked into it, with their queen, about whom they were clustered, Russ got a fine film of that.

Afterward Sandy explained how bees swarm. A colony of bees will permit but one queen in a hive. Sometimes, when a new one is hatched, the swarm divides, part of the bees going off with the new, or sometimes the old queen, to form a new colony.

This is called "swarming," and the idea is to capture the new swarm, and so increase your number of colonies. Sometimes the bees will go off to the woods, and make a home for themselves in a hollow tree, being thus lost to the keeper. A swarm of bees will make in a season many pounds of honey more than they need to feed themselves during the winter.

Sandy explained how faithful and devoted a