And now, when the main body of the emigrants has issued from their quarters, the whole air seems alive with the excited, flitting, buzzing insects. The noise of their humming can be heard for many yards away, and a novice may well wonder what is to be the end of the commotion. Ordinarily, however, within a few minutes, after their exodus, it will be observed that a gathering of a thicker crowd is taking place at some particular spot most frequently on some low tree or bush. There her majesty has settled, and at once her loyal subjects assemble around her, and form a living cluster. Quickly, from all sides, they continue to gather, and in a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes a dense mass will be hanging one to the other, till it seems wonderful the queen and those in the interior of the living ball are not suffocated. [Illustration: Fig. 61.--"Tanging."] In country places it is still the custom to beat warming-pans, tin kettles, frying-pans, or other unmusical vessels, with keys or sticks or hammers, while the bees are swarming, under the idea that the noise makes them settle the more quickly. That any effect is produced on the insects is not any longer believed by apiarians; and there is good reason for thinking that the origin of the practice was altogether different from its supposed use. The probability is, that it indicated at first nothing more than that some one wished to proclaim to the neighbours the fact of his bees having swarmed, so that he might lay claim to them wherever they might settle. It sometimes happens that the inclination to cease flying is delayed beyond the usual time. It is said by Langstroth that the throwing of a few handfuls of dust into the air, or the flashing of sunlight by a mirror among the bees, will have the effect of bringing them down. Vergil, nineteen centuries ago, pointed out that, in what he called their battles, but which were probably only the confusions of swarming, the flinging of dust or earth among them would have a quieting effect.