THE BEE'S YEAR 139 



of a fine October, for, after the winter quiescence, they 

 will still be capable of some weeks' work. On a fine 

 day in January the writer's bees swarmed out lustily ; 

 boiled crawling from the entrance ; ran over the hive 

 in an ecstasy of resurrection, and filled the air with 

 the zigzag, aimless flight of joyous beings trying their 

 wings. But, even in that flight, some fell down and 

 finished their life in the first day of awakening. 

 Every day since, when it has not been too cold to 

 stir from the cluster, there have been dead bodies to 

 carry forth or bees that flew out and lacked strength 

 to return. The cluster has closed up on the empty 

 files, losing its power of communal warmth faster than 

 the nights have gained in temperature. The cloud 

 that exercises at midday becomes evidently smaller, 

 and the perilous event, known as " spring dwindling," 

 goes on with accelerated speed. 



Now, however, the quality of the life, if not its 

 quantity, goes up. After three weeks' incubation the 

 first batch of young bees hatches. It may be but a 

 square inch of comb, numbering twenty-five cells, but 

 the twenty-five young bees are worth full fifty of the 

 old ones, even if so many should die the same day. 

 The next day there are others, and the next and the 

 next more still, in larger and larger batches. The 

 young bees make better nurses than the old, and raise 

 a still sturdier generation. Yet it is long before the 

 spring dwindling is overtaken and the population of 

 the hive begins to boom. Sometimes it happens that 

 the bees have anticipated fortune by too much, and 

 the hive is starved by over-population. Sometimes 

 that catastrophe is due to the bee-master, who can, 

 by opening the hive and bruising a few cells of honey, 



