Chap. 23] METHODS OE RENEWING THE BWABM. 23 



in the sun, after the head has been immersed in it. Some- 

 times, too, they themselves are the cause of their own de- 

 struction ; as, for instance, when they see preparations being 

 made for taking their honey, and immediately fall to de- 

 vouring it with the greatest avidity. In other respects they are 

 remarkable for their abstemiousness, and they will expel 

 those that are inclined to be prodigal and voracious, no less than 

 those that are sluggish and idle. Their own honey even may 

 be productive of injury to them ; for if they are smeared with 

 it on the fore-part of the body, it is fatal to them. Such are 

 the enemies, so numerous are the accidents — and how small a 

 portion of them have I here enumerated ! — to which a crea- 

 ture that proves so bountiful to us is exposed. In the appro- 

 priate place 72 we will treat of the proper remedies ; for the 

 present the nature of them is our subject. 



chap. 22. (20.) — how to keep bees to the hive. 

 The clapping of the hands and the tinkling of brass afford 

 bees great delight, and it is by these means that they are 

 brought together ; a strong proof, in fact, that they are pos- 

 sessed of the sense of healing. When their work is com- 

 pleted, their offspring brought forth, and all their duties, ful- 

 filled, they still have certain formal exercises to perform, ranging 

 abroad throughout the country, and soaring aloft in the air, 

 wheeling round and round as they fly, and then, when the 

 hour for taking their food has come, returning home. The 

 extreme period of their life, supposing that they escape acci- 

 dent and the attacks of their enemies, is only seven years ; 

 a hive, it is said, never lasts more than ten. 73 There are some 

 persons, who think that, when dead, if they are preserved 

 in the house throughout the winter, and then exposed to the 

 warmth of the spring sun, and kept hot all day in the ashes 

 of fig-tree wood, they will come to life again. 



chap. 23. — methods op renewing the swarm. 

 These persons say also, that if the swarm is entirely lost, it 

 may be replaced by the aid of the belly 74 of an ox newly killed, 



72 B. xxi. c. 42. 



73 Cuvier says that a hive has heen known to last more than thirty years : 

 but it is doubtful if bees ever live so long as ten, or, except the queen, 

 little more than one. 



™ Though Virgil tells the same story, in B. iv. of the Georgics, in rela- 

 tion to the shepherd Aristieus, all this is entirely fabulous. 



