If two swarms cluster together, they may be advantageously kept together, if abundant room for storing surplus honey can be given them, as in my hives. Large quantities of honey are generally obtained from such stocks, if they issue early, and the season is favorable. If it is desired to separate them, take two hives, and give a portion of the bees to each, sprinkling them, both before and after they are shaken from the basket, sufficiently to keep them from taking wing to unite again. If possible, secure a queen for each hive. If both queens enter the same hive, one will quickly dispose of the other. The bees in the queenless hive will begin to leave as soon as they ascertain their condition. Prevent this, by shutting them up; and give them a queen, if you have one at your disposal; or supply them with a sealed queen, nearly mature, taken from another hive. For reasons assigned in the next chapter, it will not do to compel them to raise a queen from worker-brood. If the Aparian who uses the common hives does not succeed in getting a mature queen for each hive, the queenless one will go back to the old stock. If, while hiving a swarm, the Apiarian wishes to secure the queen, the bees should be shaken from the hiving-basket, a foot or more from the hive, when a quick eye will generally see her as she passes over the sheet. If the bees are reluctant to go in, a few must be directed to the entrance, and care be taken to brush them back, when they press forward in such dense masses that the queen is likely to enter unobserved. An experienced eye readily detects her peculiar color and form. She may be taken up without danger, as she never stings, unless engaged in combat with another queen. It is interesting to witness how speedily a queen passes into the hive, as soon as she recognizes the joyful note announcing that her colony has found a home. She quickly follows in the direction of the moving mass, and her long legs enable her easily to outstrip, in the race for possession, all who attempt to follow her. Other bees linger around the entrance, or fly into the air, or collect in listless knots on the sheet; but a fertile mother, with an air of conscious importance, marches straight forward, and looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, glides into the hive, with the same dispatchful haste that characterizes a bee returning fully laden from the nectar-bearing fields. Persons unaccustomed to bees, may think that I speak about " scooping them up," and " shaking them out," almost as coolly as though giving directions to measure so many bushels of wheat; experience will soon convince them, that the ease with which they may be managed is not at all exaggerated. The old-fashioned way of hiving swarms, by mounting trees, and cutting off valuable limbs, should be entirely abandoned; nor should the hive ever be put over the bees, so as to crush any of them, or endanger the life of the queen. A skillful beo-keeper, with his hiving-basket, will often have six or more swarms, in the time required, by the old plan, for hiving one; and in large Aparies managed on the swarming plan, where a number of swarms come out on the same day, and there is constant danger of their mixing, this is an object of great importance. Dr. Seudamore, an English physician, who has written a tract on the Formation of Artificial Swarms, says that he once knew as "many as ten swarms go forth at once, and settle and mingle together, forming, literally, a monster meeting." There are instances recorded of a still larger number having clustered together. A venerable clergyman in Western Massachusetts, told me, that in the Apiary of one of his parishioners, five swarms once clustered together. As he had no hive which would hold them, they were put into a large box, roughly nailed together. When taken up in the Fall, it was evident that the five swarms had lived together as independent colonies. Four had begun their works, each near a corner of the box, and the fifth in the middle; and there was a distinct interval separating the works of the different colonies. In Cotton's "My Bee Book," is a cut illustrating a similar separation of two colonies in one hive. By hiving, in a large box, swarms which have settled together, and leaving them undisturbed till the following morning, they would probably be found in separate clusters, and might easily be put into different hives,