262 DESTROYING OR DEPRIVING. 



amount, as some reckon, of upwards of threescore 

 thousand, at the conclusion of the season, (Michael- 

 mas) when the stock is either destroyed, or, techni- 

 cally speaking, deprived. Under the latter dispensa- 

 tion, the mortality of these insects is sufficiently great, 

 since the numerous stock above stated, would not, 

 in all probability, by Christmas, consist of many be- 

 yond five thousand. Even at Michaelmas there are 

 seldom found, in a good stock, more than eight thou- 

 sand. Thus the life of a working bee, upon the 

 average, is not above six months ; incessant labour, 

 and the accidents to which insectile life is necessarily 

 subject, contributing to this constant mortality. The 

 bees bred at Michaelmas, and which nurse the 

 young swarms in the succeeding spring, are sup- 

 posed to be the longest lived, as not having been 

 exhausted by labour during the first four months of 

 their existence. It has been said, upon the autho- 

 rity of Mr. Huish, that the life of a queen bee might 

 extend to four years. 



This may be as proper a place as any, for a few 

 words of discussion on the old question of the expe- 

 dience of destroying the bees, in order to take the 

 honey, or depriving, that is to say, driving them 

 from the old to a fresh hive. Mortimer, who wrote 

 about a century since, adverts to this disputed 

 point, and decides, from practice, in favour of the 

 common method, destroying the bees. A late 

 French and practical apiarian writer holds the same 

 opinion, for which he advances, apparently cogent 

 reasons. All our late English Apiarians, Mr. Huish 

 at their head, oppose themselves redoubtably to the 

 practice of destruction. As to the grand point, 



