very soon; it may injure the feelings of the bees, but it certainly does not injure them physically, as it simply impairs their power of flight by wetting the wings. Even after a swarm has settled, a little sprinkle of water will keep it clustered safely until the hive is made ready to receive it.
It is highly desirable that the swarm should cluster on the tip of a branch not far from the ground; for then the process of hiving is comparatively simple. My personal plan has been to place a sheet, kept for the purpose, on the ground near the clustering swarm; place on this a covered hive filled with frames containing brood foundations. Lift the front edge of the hive about an inch by putting blocks under the two corners; then cut the branch above the cluster, and taking it in hand shake the bees off in front of the hive and placidly watch them hive themselves with true bee celerity. This use of the sheet is a habit formed in childhood, and I persist in it, though my partner derides the practice. He shakes the bees down on the board on which the hive is standing; or he takes the top off the hive, and shakes the bees down among the frames in the most summary fashion. But I think the sheet makes a softer mattress for the little citizens to fall upon, and certainly they find their way from it more easily into the hive. I am a conservative person, and like to do things as I always have done them before—a conservatism that is by no means dangerous in our apiary where the senior partner is given to new ways and many inventions.
