MY BEES. 137 



ness virtue. The only way in which adultera- 

 tion comes into play with comb-honey is in the 

 practice of feeding the bees upon glucose or 

 maple-sugar and water, which mixture they, of 

 course, store up in the boxes and " cap " over 

 in the usual way, as if it was genuine honey 

 from flowers. 



The internal economy of a beehive, with its 

 thousands of workers, its drones, and its one 

 queen, has been described so often in print 

 that I need not waste space upon it. A good 

 beehive, well filled, contains about 25,000 bees. 

 My first beehive had about 5,000 when it came 

 to me, but reached the maximum before the end 

 of the autumn. When the queen lays eggs, she 

 does so at the rate of several hundred a day, and 

 in less than three weeks the bees from these 

 eggs are flying around. Much has been said of 

 late as to the superiority of the Italian bee, 

 which carries three yellow bands upon its body, 

 over the native black bee, and as high as $50 

 have been paid for a good Italian queen. 

 Means have been devised of so packing queens 

 that they often come from Europe by mail, 

 and are sent all over the country in the same 

 way. The average price for a good queen is 



