244 THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 



instead of being left where they may be attacked by the 

 moth. 



The most fruitful cause of the ravages of the moth still 

 remains to be described. If a colony becomes hopelessly 

 queenless, it must, unless otherwise destroyed, inevitably 

 fall a prey to the bee-moth. By watching, in glass hives, 

 the proceedings of colonies purposely made queenless, I 

 have ascertained that they make little or no resistance to 

 her entrance, and allow her to lay her eggs where she 

 pleases. The worms, after hatching, appear to have their 

 own way, and are even more at home than the dispirited 



How worthless, then, to a queenless colony, are all the 

 traps and other devices which, of late years, have been so 

 much relied upon. Any passage which admits a bee is 

 large enough for the moth, and if a single female enters 

 such a hive, she will lay eggs enough to destroy it, how- 

 ever strong. Under a low estimate, she would lay, at 

 least, two hundred eggs in the hive, and the second gene- 

 ration will count by thousands, while those of the third 

 will exceed a million.f 



Not only do the bees of a hopelessly queenless hive 



* The fact that queenless stocks do not oppose any effectual resistance to the 

 moths or worms a fact which I once thought to be a discovery of my own has 

 for a long time been well known to the Germans. Mr. Wagner informs me " that 

 their best treatises, for many years, speak of this as a settled fact, so that it has 

 become an axiom that, if a colony is overpowered by robber-bees, its owner is not 

 entitled to compensation, as it was, in all likelihood, queenless, and, would cer- 

 tainly have been destroyed by the moth. 



My attention has been recently called to an article in the Ohio Cultivator for 

 1849, page 185, by Micajah T. Johnson, in which, after detailing some experiments, 

 he says : " One thing is certain if bees, from any cause, should lose their queen, 

 and not have the means in their power of raising another, the miller and the 

 worms soon take possession. I believe no hive is destroyed by worms while an 

 efficient queen remains in it." 



This seems to be the earliest published notice of this important fact by any 

 American observer. 



t This power of rapid increase accounts for Judge Fishback's and Dr. Kirtland's 

 facts respecting the rapid dissemination of the moth. 



