EEV. H. R. TEEL — BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 185 



under the impression that they do not. They say that they have 

 often handled them without any unpleasant consequences. This 

 must arise, I think, from the fact that in the height of summer, 

 the time when people generally take most notice of these insects, 

 they see more of the males than they do of the females. The male, 

 ■who has no duties to perform at home, who collects no honey or 

 pollen, secretes no wax, builds no cells, feeds no young, is like the 

 idle and lazy husband of the working, or as they have been called, 

 of the non- working class, who is to be seen oftener out of doors 

 than in, generally not a hundi-ed miles from the nearest public- 

 house, whilst his wife, with his sisters, are working hard indoors, 

 and stri\'ing to keep the home together. If any one doubts whether 

 the female worker-bees have stings, at what the Americans call the 

 business ends of their tails, or whether the hard-working wife of 

 the idle labourer or mechanic has a sting at the business end of her 

 tongue, a sting equally full of deadly poison, let him go and disturb 

 either of them in the midst of their domestic avocations at home, 

 and I think that his doubts will speedily be removed. 



Let me tell you now how my own particular bees spent the late 

 winter, after they had destroyed their drones. First of all, they 

 took in the food with which I supplied them, after the flowers 

 were all gone, and went on hatching out broods from the eggs 

 which the queen kept laying until the cold and ungenial weather 

 at the end of November seemed to deprive her of all energy and 

 the bees of all appetite. Then they gathered themselves upon one 

 frame. As many as could, crept into the empty cells, whilst the 

 others sat upon the outside and kept up a continuous motion of 

 their bodies with a view to generating heat. The temperature of 

 this part of the hive, to judge from a thermometer placed in another 

 portion of it, could never have been less than 60 or 70 degrees. 

 Did they sleep ? So far as I could judge, and I have looked at 

 them at all hours of the night as well as of the day, there were 

 always some who were awake. The queen was always moving 

 about amongst her daughters by night and day, but listlessly and 

 without energy. She ceased to lay any eggs after the beginning 

 of December. She re-commenced laying about a month or five 

 weeks ago, slowly and at long intervals. She is now laying faster 

 and faster, and in the height of the summer she will be laying 

 between 2000 and 3000 eggs in the twenty-four hours. 



As the summer advances, and as soon as the hives are teeming 

 with a large and overflowing population, the bees have a natural 

 tendency or instinct to swarm, teaching us what is the best remedy 

 for a country like our own when it is overstocked and its inhabi- 

 tants become too numerous for it. When the bees swarm, it is the 

 reigning queen — the old queen as she is called — who goes forth 

 with the swarm. Old she may be in comparison with the workers 

 which live only from four to six months, according to the amount 

 of work which they do, having a longer existence in winter than 

 in summer, or with the drones which are destroyed at the end of 

 each honey season. A queen will live from three to four years, 



