II 



THE SWARM 



[9] 



WE will now, so as to draw more 

 closely to nature, consider the 

 different episodes of the swarm as they 

 come to pass in an ordinary hive, which 

 is ten or twenty times more populous 

 than an observation one, and leaves the 

 bees entirely free and untrammelled. 



Here, then, they have shaken off the 

 torpor of winter. The queen started 

 laying again in the very first days of 

 February, and the workers have flocked 

 to the willows and nut-trees, gorse and 

 violets, anemones and lungworts. Then 

 spring invades the earth, and cellar and 

 stream with honey and pollen, while each 



37 



