"Oh, there's a notion that bees will settle down in a bunch around th' queen, and not fly away if they hear a racket. I don't know whether it's true or not. Some folks spray 'em with water, and that usually fetches 'em."
Meanwhile Russ came out with the camera and began taking pictures of the odd scene. First he got pictures of Ruth, Alice and the teacher applying mud to the stings of the children.
"Well, we'll get a good film out of it, after all," said Mr. Pertell. "And we can do the school room scene over again after the excitement calms down."
Then Russ began taking pictures of the men making a noise to try and induce the bees to settle. The men themselves seemed to enjoy being filmed. They wore veils of mosquito netting, draped over their broad-brimmed hats, for they approached close to the bees, which were now flying low.
"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 colony of bees is to their queen, which is the bee that lays eggs out of which are hatched drones, or male bees, and the workers. There is a peculiar kind of honey called "queen bread," and sometimes, it is said by some, when a queen bee dies, the workers will select a "cell" containing an egg that will eventually hatch, and surround this egg with queen bread so that when the insect develops enough, it can feed on that instead of on ordinary honey.