300 DESTROYING OR DEPRIVING. 



nearly to Michaelmas, the number of bees hatched 

 will, with common success, amount to upwards of 

 five thousand. These, added to the original number 

 of the swarm, will swell it to the amount, as some 

 reckon, of upwards of fifteen thousand at the con- 

 clusion of the season (Michaelmas), when the stock is 

 either destroyed, or, technically speaking, deprived. 

 Under the latter dispensation, the mortality of these 

 insects is sufficiently great, since the numerous stock 

 above stated, would not, in all probability, by Christ- 

 mas, consist of many beyond five thousand. Even at 

 Michaelmas there are seldom found, in a good stock, 

 more than eight thousand. Thus the life of a work- 

 ing bee, upon the average, is not above six months ; 

 incessant labour, and the accidents to which insectile 

 life is necessarily subject, contributes to a constant 

 mortality. The bees bred at Michaelmas, and which 

 nurse the young swarms in the succeeding spring, are 

 supposed 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 authority 

 of Mr. Huish, that the life of a queen bee has 

 extended 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 held the same opinion, for 



