194 DISEASES OF BEES. 



means to continue the vital energy. The sudden- 

 ness of the unhappy change may reasonably lead 

 the uninformed or improvident to suppose that 

 an incurable malady has visited their hives : so 

 long as the store of honey lasted, there were health 

 and' prosperity ; but that gone, famine commenced 

 its ravages, and an extinction of the bees of course 

 followed. A little foresight and a little trouble 

 would have kept off the calamity. I am perhaps 

 tediously particular in this notice. I wish to im- 

 press my noviciate bee-friends with the necessity 

 of thus providing for their hives, that the most 

 frequent agent of mischief, hunger, may be kept 

 out 'of them. Still further let me also recommend 

 to them, on the approach of winter to have the 

 floors of their hives or boxes well cleaned from 

 insects and their eggs, and from all heterogeneous 

 matter. This is a business which the bees them- 

 selves, when the weather admits of it, are par- 

 ticularly attentive to ; indeed they refrain, as 

 much as possible, from dropping their excrement 

 upon the floors, taking advantage of every fine 

 day in winter to sally forth and get rid of it. This 

 was proved by the experiments of Mr. Hunter : in- 

 deed they sometimes fall a sacrifice to their per- 

 sonal neatness in this respect, their bodies becoming 

 so swelled, from the accumulation of faeces, as com- 

 pletely to disable them from flying, when the wea- 





