ON THE ECONOMY OF BEES. 355 



apparently proposed to enter was not more than a quarter of a mile 

 distant from the hive whence a swarm were prepared to emigrate, I wit- 

 nessed a very rapid change of the individuals who visited their future 

 contemplated habitation ; and the number which in the course of three 

 days entered it, appeared to me to be fully equal to constitute a very large 

 swarm : and upon the evidence of these and other facts, which I shall 

 proceed to state, I am much disposed to infer, that not a single labouring 

 bee ever emigrates in a swarm without having seen the future proposed 

 habitation of that swarm. That the queen-bee has also always seen her 

 future habitation, I am also much inclined to believe, as she is well known 

 to absent herself from the hive some time previously to the emigration of 

 a swarm : though her object may be to meet a male of another hive ; for 

 I much doubt whether she ever receives the embraces of a brother. The 

 results of some of Huber's experiments are very favourable to this conclu- 

 sion, as is the otherwise excessive number of male bees ; and in both the 

 animal and vegetable world, nature has taken very ample means of facili- 

 tating what the breeders of improved varieties of domesticated animals 

 call cross-breeding. 



I have also been led by the following facts to believe, that not only the 

 future permanent habitation of each swarm, but the place where they 

 temporarily settle, apparently to collect their numbers, soon after they 

 quit their hive, is known also to each individual. Different families of 

 domesticated animals of every species present some peculiarities of dispo- 

 sition and habit ; and the swarms of the family of bees which were the 

 subject of my experiments showed, I think, more than an ordinary 

 disposition to unite, by two apparently joining the same queen. My 

 attention was consequently attracted to the circumstances which preceded 

 such unions. 



The simultaneous movements and agitation of two hives had during 

 several days led me to expect that a junction of their swarms was con- 

 templated ; and the two ultimately issued out almost at the same moment, 

 and instantly united, as I had concluded they would. The weather was 

 excessively hot ; and I put them into a hive which was scarcely large 

 enough to hold them, affording them no further shelter from the sun than 

 I thought just sufficient to prevent the melting of their combs. This 

 occurred upon the first day of June, and in the morning of the twenty- 

 third a very large swarm emigrated. There was in this, I believe, nothing 

 very extraordinary or peculiar, except the excessive expedition apparently 

 employed in raising a second queen. 



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