kingdom. The royal larvæ, Huber tells us, in spinning their cocoons, leave the lower rings of the body unprotected by the gossamer envelope, that thus,—and it is certainly considerate on their part,—the head being too well shielded by the hard nature of its substances, and the cocoon endangering the safety of her sting by its entangling flimsy threads, their queenly assailant may destroy them without detriment to herself, by stinging that portion left exposed. On the contrary, we are informed by his refuters, that, even were the body destitute of this covering, which is not the case, it would present a horny, scaly surface, from which there would be infinitely greater difficulty in extracting the sting than from the silken meshes of any cocoon,—and that, as no sting could pierce the waxen wall of the cell, and as the royal cell is vertical, and the nymph lies with its head towards the orifice of it, unless the queen, with her sting of the eighth of an inch in length, had the power of darting it through the orifice to the distance of three fourths of an inch, the act would be otherwise an impossibility,—and that, to finish the affair, these infant princesses are destroyed by the bees themselves, who, finding them unnecessary for further swarming, tear them from their cells, and despatch them, not by dart or venom, but, when they are in a sufficiently advanced stage, by an attack of the teeth at the root of the wings, in the same way that they despatch the drone, disabling and dragging them out of the hive, after they have become supernumeraries, where they drop to the ground, and, powerless to fly and escape, perish with cold, or become the prey of bird, mouse, and reptile. It is possible that none of the various tribes of all the tiny arm-bearing people make use of the coup de grâce in their power, except as a last resort. Still, when the bees find it necessary, they use it with Spartan cunning. Bruin can testify to that in his sensitive muzzle; and thus, when he takes a fancy to their conserve of blossoms, he carries off the hive in his hug, and plunges it into the nearest brook or pool till the bees are drowned, and all their riches made his undisturbed possession. The bee that is not irascible betrays a dismal home and a miserable mother; he has nothing worth fighting for. But far from him be malice; unmolested, he does not molest. For one who has lived in an old mansion, with bats' nests under the eaves and wasps' nests everywhere, waking in autumn mornings to count the customary inhabitants of the latter clustered on the cornices by threescores, while observing that they always made themselves sufficiently at home, not only to claim a place at table, but to walk across the cloth and help themselves, pausing sometimes midway to flirt out the purple enamel of a wing for admiration, and never giving offence to one of the house,—for one who has seen this fierce and fell fury so prettily and quietly behaved, it is pardonable to claim an equal amount of moderation for the sweeter and purer nature of the little honey-maker, who has learned his gentler manners of the flowers themselves. There are occasions, moreover, when the bees positively forget they have a sting at all, as when, in swarming, they are so entirely absorbed that they may be lifted in handfuls. M. Lombard states the circumstance of a child's being cured of her fear of the sting by an experience of this season. "A swarm having left a hive, I observed the queen alight by herself, at a little distance from the apiary. I immediately called my little friend, that I might show her this important personage. She was anxious to have a nearer view of Her Majesty; and therefore, having first caused her to draw on her gloves, I gave the queen into her hand. Scarcely had I done so, when we were surrounded by all the bees of the swarm. In this emergency, I encouraged the trembling girl to be steady, and to fear nothing, remaining myself close by her, and covering her head and shoulders with a thin handkerchief. I then made her stretch out the hand that held the queen, and the bees instantly alighted on it, and hung from her fingers as from the branch of a tree. The little girl, experiencing no injury, was delighted above measure at the novel sight, and so entirely freed from all fear that she bade me uncover her face. The spectators were charmed at the interesting spectacle. I at length brought a hive, and, shaking the swarm from the child's hand, it was lodged in safety without inflicting a single sting."

But however greatly opinions may vary in this branch of natural history on one or another topic, the principal dispute is concerning the relations that may subsist between the queen and the drones. Huber had a complicated arrangement in reference to this, which his admirers accepted enthusiastically, while Latreille and other apiarists reject it as a cluster of prurient fancies. The opinion of Huish upon the subject, which would seem to have more probability to support it than others have, is that the queen commences to lay immediately on being established, and that the eggs being in their separate cells, it is the office of the drone to make them fruitful, after the custom of certain fish and of frogs.

"When the population of the hive has been so increased by the opening of the brood-cells that accommodation has become insufficient, and the heat so unendurable that every wing droops wet and flaccid with perspiration, as grand an emigration as those of the early Northern tribes is ordered, scouts are sent out to select the future place of abode, and in some propitious moment of perfect sunshine, honey-pouches full and nothing to delay, the great exodus takes place with a noise as if the whole hive were attacked by vertigo; and Homer himself could find nothing to which to compare his multitudinous Greeks thronging from their ships fitter than these nations of close-swarming bees. That the young queen should lead the departing swarm seems the natural occurrence, being desirous of fulfilling her own destiny and of hastening from a hive hostile to all but one mistress whom they already know and love. Huber, however, will have it that it is the old queen, who, outraged and indignant at her treatment when a rival is allowed to live, sounds the alarm and sallies forth with her adherents. In support of this Mr. Duncan mentions having deprived an old queen of one of her antennæ, and noticing her thereafter at the head of a swarm, although Huber previously makes it known that any bee deprived of one of its antennæ is rendered useless. And in opposition to it may be given the circumstance quoted by Mr. Huish, in which the German apiarian Scopoli asserts, that, having clipped the wings of a queen, he found her still in his hive after an interval of many months, during which two excellent swarms had been thrown, and rather plumes himself on the triumphant fact, as if by any possibility she could have gotten away. A hive will throw off from one to four swarms in a season, but the last two are generally worthless, and should be deprived of their queens and returned to the parent stock. We have an old adage to this purpose,—

and any one may verify it who chooses to investigate the condition of such swarms at the conclusion of the harvest, when it will be seen that those which founded their colony at so late an hour have not collected sufficient honey even for their winter provision, and must be fed in order to be saved till spring.

They have dainty appetites, these little people. They will work away with their forceps at a bit of sweetmeat, but they can absorb only liquids through