If high trees and no shrubbery is the rule in the vicinity of your hives, you will probably need your long-handled swarm-catcher. Or you will very soon begin the practice of clipping the wings of your queens. When the clipped queen brings out a swarm she hops about near the hive. She may climb into a shrub if one is near by. Why not provide her with a still more convenient forked stick as some bee-keepers do? She climbs up this, calls her family together, and you do the rest. You may prefer to capture the queen in your little queen trap, and place her at the entrance to a new hive which you should place on the stand where the old hive was. The bees will return to their old location when they discover that the queen is not with them. The new hive will receive them and the queen when released will go in with her family. If the bees refuse to stay in the new hive, it may be because the hive is too hot. Prop up both hive and cover to allow extra ventilation. MAKING APPARATUS While I do not advise any amateur bee-keeper to try to construct his own hives and frames, I do think it is a fine idea to begin right away to study how to improve the appliances now in use. You will have to discard many of your own ideas as useless when you come to try to apply them to practical use. There are lots of patented appliances for sale that make an experienced bee-keeper smile. He undoubtedly knows a clever boy at home who can rig up a home-made contraption that will cost nothing at all, and do the work better than the expensive tool. A boy that keeps bees will find a knowledge of tools and wood-working of great advantage to him, and a girl's deft fingers will know how to put materials together that a professional would never think of. In this connection I will here describe a swarm-catcher, devised by a practical bee-keeper many years ago and recommended by an expert in Apiculture of the United States Department of Agriculture. The construction is so simple that I believe I could make one myself! Though home-made, it is interesting to see how thoroughly scientific are the essential features of this device, all based on a knowledge of bee instincts. This description is adapted from an article by Dr. B. N. Gates in one of the annual reports of the Maryland Bee-Keepers' Association. The accompanying drawing was made from a picture of the swarm-catcher in the same report. The apparatus consists of a box with one end open and supported on a pole. The materials required are nails, a large wire hook, some thin boards, and two or three poles of different lengths. A saw, a bit and brace, and a hammer are the only tools required for making it. [Illustration: Swarm-catcher that works like magic. Any handy boy can make it]