some experience to placidly lift out a frame, covered with what at first sight looks like a dark, boiling, viscous fluid, fit only for a witch's cauldron, but which soon to the startled eye resolves itself into bee particles. If the brood must be examined or queen cells found, then it becomes necessary to get rid of this seething, enveloping bee-mass, which is done in a manner that seems like nothing less than tempting Providence. The brood-frame is seized firmly in the operator's hands, and held about waist high in front of the hive, then let to drop, hands and all, swiftly to within about six inches of the doorstep of the hive, then suddenly jerked back again; the bees being heavy and receiving the downward impetus, keep right on as a man keeps on when his bicycle stops suddenly in a rut—with this difference that the bees land safely at the entrance of the hive, into which they scamper as soon as their dazed wits will allow. One would naturally think that the bees would attack the active agent of this indignity, but while bees are ever ready to fight recognised enemies, they have evolved no plan of action which is equal to a cataclysm, except to get under cover as soon as possible. Thus being shaken from their foundations is to them what an earthquake is to us, and the attitude of Riley's boy is theirs.
"Where's a boy a-goin' an' what's he goin' to do,
An' how's he goin' to do it, when the world bu'sts through?"
Thus it is that among the first accomplishments of the apiarist is the one that enables him skilfully
