SOME BEE LORE 51 



in days of supreme distress, the honey of April is 

 stored, most limpid and perfumed of all, in 20,000 

 reservoirs that form a long and magnificent em- 

 broidery of gold, whose borders hang stiff and rigid. 

 Still lower, the honey of May matures, in great 

 open vats, by whose side watchful cohorts maintain 

 an incessant current of air. In the centre, and far 

 from the light, whose diamond rays steal in through 

 the only opening, in the warmest part of the hive, 

 there stands the abode of the future, here does it 

 sleep and wake. For this is the royal domain of 

 the brood cells, set apart for the Queen and her 

 acolytes, about 10,000 cells, wherein the eggs 

 repose, 15,000 or 16,000 chambers tenanted by 

 larvae, 40,000 dwellings inhabited by white nymphs, 

 to whom thousands of nurses minister. 



" And finally, in the holy of holies of these parts, 

 are the three, four, or six sealed palaces, vast in size 

 compared with the others, where the adolescent 

 princesses lie who await their hour; wrapped in a 

 kind of shroud, all of them pale and motionless, 

 and fed in the darkness." 



It seems that of all the insect associations, there 

 are none that have more excited the attention and 

 admiration of mankind in every age, than the 

 colonies of bees, and many ancient Greek and 

 Roman writers are loud in their praise. 



Marvellous and wonderful in their absurdity, 

 were some of the errors and fables which many of 

 the ancients believed, with regard to the generation 

 and propagation of the " busy bee." For instance, 

 that they were sometimes produced from the 

 putrid bodies of oxen and lions, the kings and 

 leaders from the brain, and the vulgar herd from the 



