Bee Lore

Then the veiled angel lit a match and put it into the can she was holding.  The “smoker” started smoking.  She squeezed a small contraption on the end of the can and smoke appeared from the nozzle.  She said at me in her low, chanting voice: “It reminds them of a forest fire and although they are drowsy, they will move away from the smoke and into the box”.  Very slowly, very gently she started puffing small bursts of smoke onto the bees so that they melted uphill into the box, just as honey might melt from a spoon into a jar – only against gravity!  Perhaps it was like honey would flow if you were pouring it in a spaceship – though I didn’t suppose that honey was a sensible food to take on a spaceship!  “We need to find the Queen”, she said.  After about ten minutes the medicine ball was down to the size of a football. It was then that she said “There she is!  Once the Queen is in the box the rest of the swarm will follow very quickly. The worker bees are in love with her smell.”  She was quite right! Once the Queen had been smoked into the box, it only took another few minutes before the last remaining bees moved much more quickly to follow her. Overall the exercise took about twenty minutes. Incredible, since the whole swarm had landed on the fence in about forty five seconds.