We were busy with the impossible hen when the alarm came. The impossible hen is sitting on a dozen eggs in the shed, and, like the boy on the burning deck, obstinately refuses to leave the post of duty. A sense of duty is an excellent thing, but even a sense of duty can be carried to excess, and this hen's sense of duty is simply a disease. She is so fiercely attached to her task that she cannot think of eating, and resents any attempt to make her eat as a personal affront or a malignant plot against her impending family. Lest she should die at her post, a victim to a misguided hunger strike, we were engaged in the delicate process of substituting a more reasonable hen, and it was at this moment that a shout from the orchard announced that No. 5 was swarming.

It was unexpected news, for only the day before a new nucleus hive had been built up from the brood frames of No. 5 and all the queen cells visible had been removed. But there was no doubt about the swarm. Around the hive the air was thick with the whirring mass and filled with the thrilling strum of innumerable wings. There is no sound in nature more exciting and more stimulating. At one moment the hive is normal. You pass it without a suspicion of the great adventure that is being hatched within. The next, the whole colony roars out like a cataract, envelops the hive in a cloud of living dust until the queen has emerged and gives direction to the masses that slowly cohere around her as she settles on some branch. The excitement is contagious. It is a call to adventure with the unknown, an adventure sharpened by the threat of loss and tense with the instancy of action. They have the start. It is your wit against their impulse, your strategy against their momentum. The cloud thins and expands as it moves away from the hive and you are puzzled to know whither the main stream is moving in these ever widening folds of motion. The first indeterminate signs of direction to-day were towards the beech woods behind the cottage, but with the aid of a syringe we put up a barrage of water in that direction, and headed them off towards a row of chestnuts and limes at the end of the paddock beyond the orchard. A swift encircling move, armed with syringe and pail, brought them again under the improvised rainstorm. They concluded that it was not such a fine day as they had thought after all, and that they had better take shelter at once, and to our entire content the mass settled in a great blob on a conveniently low bough of a chestnut tree. Then, by the aid of a ladder and patient coaxing, the blob was safely transferred to a skep, and carried off triumphantly to the orchard.

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And now, but for the war, all would have been well. For, but for the war, there would have been a comfortable home in which the adventurers could have taken up their new quarters. But hives are as hard to come by in these days as petrol or matches, or butter or cheese, or most of the other common things of life. We had ransacked England for hives and the neighbourhood for wood with which to make hives; but neither could be had, though promises were plenty, and here was the beginning of the swarms of May, each of them worth a load of hay according to the adage, and never a hive to welcome them with. Perhaps to-morrow something would arrive, if not from Gloucester, then from Surrey. If only the creatures would make themselves at home in the skep for a day or two....

But no. For two hours or so all seemed well. Then perhaps they found the skep too hot, perhaps they detected the odour of previous tenants, perhaps—but who can read the thoughts of these inscrutable creatures? Suddenly the skep was enveloped in a cyclone of bees, and again the orchard sang with the exciting song of the wings. For a moment the cloud seemed to hover over an apple tree near by, and once more the syringe was at work insisting, in spite of the sunshine, that it was a dreadfully wet day on which to be about, and that a dry skep, even though pervaded by the smell of other bees, had points worth considering. In vain. This time they had made up their minds. It may be that news had come to them, from one of the couriers sent out to prospect for fresh quarters, of a suitable home elsewhere, perhaps a deserted hive, perhaps a snug hollow in some porch or in the bole of an ancient tree. Whatever the goal, the decision was final. One moment the cloud was about us; the air was filled with the high-pitched roar of thirty thousand pair of wings. The next moment the cloud had gone—gone sailing high over the trees in the paddock and out across the valley. We burst through the paddock fence into the cornfield beyond; but we might as well have chased the wind. Our first load of hay had taken wings and gone beyond recovery. For an hour or two there circled round the deserted skep a few hundred odd bees who had apparently been out when the second decision to migrate was taken, and found themselves homeless and queenless. I saw some of them try to enter other hives, but they were promptly ejected as foreigners by the sentries who keep the porch and admit none who do not carry the authentic odour of the hive. Perhaps the forlorn creatures got back to No. 5, and the young colony left in possession of that tenement.

We have lost the first skirmish in the campaign, but we are full of hope, for timber has arrived at last, and from the carpenter's bench under the pear tree there comes the sound of saw, hammer, and plane, and before nightfall there will be a hive in hand for the morrow. And it never rains but it pours—here is a telegram telling us of three hives on the way. Now for a counter-offensive of artificial swarms. We will harvest our loads of hay before they take wing.

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