UNDER the old systems of bee keeping, swarming was very imperfectly understood. And even at the present time it is amusing to see how many old bee-keepers manage their bees. This is a class of old fogies, who denounce all improvements and progress in bee keeping, and who, year after year, move in the same tracks in the management of their bees, asserting that they know all about bees that is worth knowing. It is, to say the least, amusing, to see how this class of bee-keepers manage when their bees swarm. In the middle of some very warm day in June or July, the alarm "_bees swarming_," is sounded. Immediately the whole household is turned out, some beating tin pans, some sounding horns, some shaking cow bells--anything and everything with which to make a terrible din is caught up in the excitement, and every member of the household works with the sole aim of making as much noise as possible. This is done to _make the bees cluster!_ _If this is not done, they will leave for the woods!_ I should think the poor bees would leave any way, to get rid of the noise and the foolish whims of their owner. But no, they dislike to leave the place of their nativity, so in ten minutes or less from the time they leave the hive, they settle in a cluster on some object, generally within a half-dozen rods of the hive. And they would have done so in this case if no noise had been made. _The noise did not affect them in the least._ Now the bees are to be hived, and we will see how it is done in the old way. The bees in this case have clustered on a limb of a valuable pear tree. "Very sorry they have pitched there," says the man of perfect knowledge in bee keeping; "I dislike to injure that tree, but there is no help for it." But first a hive must be prepared. It is not quite ready. (This is bad management.) It must be washed out thoroughly on the inside with salt and water, and rubbed over with some sweet scented herbs. A bottom board must be got ready etc., etc. At last the hive is ready. Now this wise bee keeper places a table near where the swarm clustered, sets his hive on the table, raises one edge four or six inches, takes his saw--Oh, it is a pity to cut that nice limb full of fruit from the pear tree; but it must be done, thinks this man of perfection in bee management. He grasps the limb firmly near the cluster of bees. They are _very cross, and uneasy_. They have been clustered an hour or more, while he has been getting his hive ready. He saws off the limbs on which the bees are hanging, and places it carefully, with the bees adhering, on the table, by the side of the hive, covers all _very nicely_ with a clean sheet, and leaves them alone to enter the hive. At _about sunset_ he will place the hive with the bees in it on the stand it is to occupy.