igo THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



of a long obsolete habit in bee-life, a workable 

 theory at once suggests itself. Under primaeval 

 conditions the continued life of the mother-colony 

 may have been unnecessary. Its purpose may 

 have been fully served when a number of young 

 queens and drones had been raised, and the whole 

 had swarmed out together, each to form a new 

 settlement. It must be remembered that the 

 bee-hive, persisting indefinitely from year to year, 

 is really quite a modern creation, and became 

 practicable only with the invention of the movable 

 comb-frame, which allowed the bee-master to eiifect 

 the renewal of combs. It has been seen that the 

 brood-combs get gradually choked up with the 

 pupa-cocoons, which each bee leaves behind it. 

 These webs are so incredibly thin that a dozen of 

 them make little appreciable difference to the 

 capacity of the cell, and combs have been known 

 to remain in use for brood-raising as long as 

 twenty years. But eventually they must become 

 useless ; and then, as bees do not, or cannot, 

 remove old combs to make way for new, the com- 

 munity must leave for a new home, or gradually 

 die out. Thus the age of the old hives was 

 definitely limited. 



Modern beemanship has wrought many other 

 changes in the life of the honey-bee in addition to 

 creating the permanent hive- city. The number 

 of bees in a single strong stock, housed in a modern 

 frame hive, is probably three times as great as that 



