The Bee-Master of Warrilow. 



before they feel the want of it. Every motive for swarming 

 has been removed, and the result to the bee-master will 

 probably be seventy or eighty pounds of surplus honey, 

 instead of none at all, if the bees had been left to their old 

 primaeval ways." 



" You must always remember, however," he added, as 

 a final word, " that bees do nothing invariably. 'Tis an 

 old and threadbare saying amongst bee-keepers, but there's 

 nothing truer under the sun. Bees have exceptions to 

 almost every rule. While all other creatures seem to keep 

 blindly to one pre-ordained way in everything they do, you 

 can never be certain at any time that bees will not reverse 

 their ordinary course to meet circumstances you may know 

 nothing of. And that is all the more reason why the bee- 

 master himself should allow no deviations in his own work 

 about the hives : his ways must be as the ways of the Medes 

 and Persians." 



40 



