Text 1: A cloud above the city, by Leonie Marsh

An original contemporary magazine article.

The bees leave their hive at lunchtime. One moment, the rooftop garden is warm and uneventful; the next, the air above it is boiling. Thousands of bees circle the chimneys, turning the sky brown and filling it with a sound too large to belong to insects.

I flatten myself against the door. Safiya Grant, who looks after the six hives on this roof, puts down her mug and watches. She does not reach for the protective suit hanging beside the shed.

"They aren't chasing us," she says. "They're looking for somewhere to wait."

A swarm forms when part of a colony leaves with a queen. Until the bees find a permanent home, they gather around her in a dense cluster. Safiya points towards a rowan tree at the far end of the roof. The circling bees are settling on one of its branches. Within ten minutes, they have become a dark, slowly moving shape about the size of a football.

Safiya pulls on her veil and gloves, places an empty wooden box beneath the branch and climbs a short ladder. I am given the important responsibility of holding the ladder, which mainly involves trying not to imagine several thousand bees falling down my collar.

She takes the branch in one hand and gives it a single, hard shake. The cluster drops. It does not fall like an object but pours, widening in the air before landing in the box with a soft thump. A few bees rise around Safiya's head. Most begin to crawl over one another, and the noise changes from the roar of an engine to the steady patter of rain.

We wait. Safiya says that if the queen is in the box, the other bees will follow her. For several minutes, nothing seems decided. Bees stream both in and out, and a fresh knot begins to form on the branch. Then the knot loosens. Lines of bees move towards the box and vanish through its narrow entrance.

By four o'clock, the branch is bare. Safiya closes the lid and writes the time and location in her notebook. I ask if catching a swarm always goes so smoothly. She looks at the box, which is vibrating gently at our feet. "No," she says, "but you must behave as if it will."

Text 2: The swarm in the pear tree, by Clara Whitcombe

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1890, a young woman tells her brother how her family caught a swarm of bees on their farm.

Dear Thomas,

You will laugh to hear that Father left me in charge of the bees on Tuesday. He had gone to market when Mary came running from the orchard, beating a saucepan with a spoon and crying that a swarm was away. I thought at first that the kitchen was on fire.

The bees rose over the hives in such a multitude that the sun appeared to flicker. They passed above the wall and settled high in the old pear tree. Grandmother fetched the new wooden hive and rubbed its inside with leaves. She told me to bring the ladder. Mary offered to hold it, though she is twelve and has never held anything still in her life.

From the ground, the swarm looked no larger than a man's hat. From the ladder, it seemed to cover half the tree. The branch bent beneath it, and the surface of the cluster moved continually, as water moves in a pot before it boils. I confess that I stopped three rungs below it and announced that the ladder was unsafe. Grandmother replied that the ladder had carried heavier burdens than me.

I tied a basket below the swarm and began to saw the branch. At the last stroke it split suddenly. The branch, the basket and a great quantity of bees came down together. Mary released the ladder and ran. I remained in the tree, embracing the trunk with my eyes shut, while Grandmother called instructions which I could not hear above the buzzing.

When I looked again, the branch lay across the basket, but most of the bees were gathered inside it. Grandmother covered them with a cloth and carried the basket to the waiting hive. By evening, the swarm had entered, and bees stood in a line at the opening, beating their wings.

Father returned after dark. He inspected the hive with a lantern and said only that we had chosen a poor branch to cut. Yet at supper he gave me the largest slice of pie, so I believe he was pleased. I have three stings upon my wrist and cannot fasten my cuff, but I would climb the tree again tomorrow.

Your affectionate sister,

Clara

Both of these texts are about catching a swarm of bees.

Compare:

• what the writers say about catching the swarms
• how the writers convey the fear and the satisfaction

You must use the text to support your comments and make it clear which text you are referring to.