In the spring or early summer, when the hive has become populous, and storing very active, the queen, as if conscious that a home could be overcrowded, and foreseeing such danger, commences to deposit drone-eggs in drone-cells, which the worker-bees, perhaps moved by like considerations, begin to construct, if they are not already in existence. In fact, drone comb is almost sure of construction at such times. No sooner is the drone brood well under way, than the large, awkward, queen-cells are commenced, often to the number of ten or fifteen, though there may be not more than three or four. In these, eggs are placed, and the rich royal jelly added, and soon, often before the cells are even capped--and _very rarely_ before a cell is built, if the bees are crowded, the hives unshaded, the ventilation insufficient, or the honey-yield very bountiful--some bright day, usually about ten o'clock, after an unusual disquiet both inside and outside the hive, a large part of the worker-bees--being off duty for the day, and having previously loaded their honey-sacks--rush forth from the hive as if alarmed by the cry of fire, the queen among the number, though she is by no means among the first, and frequently is quite late in her exit. The bees, thus started on their quest for a new home, after many uproarious gyrations about the old one, dart forth to alight upon some bush, limb, or fence, though in one case I have known the first swarm of bees to leave at once, for parts unknown, without even waiting to cluster. After thus meditating for the space of from one to three hours, upon a future course, they again take wing and leave for their new home, which they have probably already sought out. Some suppose the bees look up a home before leaving the hive, while others claim that scouts are in search of one while the bees are clustered. The fact that bees take a right-line to their new home, and fly too rapidly to look as they go, would argue that a home is preêmpted, at least, before the cluster is dissolved. The fact that the cluster remains sometimes for hours--even over night--and at other times for a brief period, would lead us to infer that the bees cluster, in waiting for a new home to be found. Yet, why do bees sometimes alight after flying a long distance, as did a first swarm the past season, upon our College grounds? Was their journey long, so that they must needs stop to rest, or were they flying at random, not knowing whither they were going?