This operation we once performed--exactly as described above except that there was no frame-extracting--with one of our improved cottage hives. Whilst inspecting our bees we caught sight of the queen on the comb in one of the bell glasses. This was a chance not to be missed, and we immediately resolved to form an artificial swarm, for the hive was very full of bees. Besides, being obliged to be away from the apiary most of the week, we were glad of the opportunity of so easily establishing a colony without the uncertainty and trouble of hiving a natural swarm. In the first place we slid a tin under the bell glass, and, removing the stock hive from underneath, we took it a few feet away; then we placed an empty improved cottage hive where the old stock had stood, and put the glass of comb containing the queen and a few bees over one of the holes in the crown of this new empty hive. The bees that were left abroad belonging to the old stock returned as usual to their old entrance as they supposed; soon a sufficient number formed a large cluster in the hive and began comb-building, the queen remaining in the glass until the cells below were sufficiently numerous for her to deposit her eggs in them. The experiment answered exceedingly well. Both hives prospered: the old hive either had some princesses coming forward to supply the loss of the queen, or the bees used the power that they possess of raising a queen from worker brood in the manner we have previously described (page 16). The foregoing account illustrates the successful formation of an artificial swarm; but, with a cottage hive, gaining possession of the queen is on this method quite a matter of chance. With a movable-frame hive she can at any suitable time be found. Precisely the same plan is to be adopted with the old stock in the frame hive as we have described in the case of the cottage, that is, to remove it some few paces off: when the hives are in a bee-house a similar result may be obtained by placing the new swarm for a day or two so as to be reached by the same entrance as the old stock, and the latter may be removed to one close by. Some apiarians recommend that a space be left between the two hives, by arranging them on the right and left of the old entrance, in order that too large a proportion of bees should not enter the new hive at the old position, to the impoverishment of the other. But we have found the mode adopted with the cottage hive answer so well that we see no reason for recommending any different plan.