ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 221 



a very hard bargain has been imposed upon them, but they 

 seem generally determined to make the best of it. 



There is one trait in the character of bees, for which I 

 feel, not merely admiration, but the most profound respect. 

 Such is their indomitable energy and perseverance, that un- 

 der circumstances apparantly the most despairing, they will 

 still labor to the utmost, to retrieve their losses, and sustain 

 the sinking state. So long as they have a queen, or any 

 prospect of raising one, they struggle most vigorously 

 against impending ruin, and never give up, unless their con- 

 dition is absolutely desperate. In one of my observing hives, 

 I once had a colony of bees, the whole of which might have 

 been spread out on my two hands, busy at work in raising 

 a new queen, from a small piece of brood comb. For two 

 long weeks, they adhered with unfailing perseverance and 

 industry, to their forlorn hope : until at last, one of the two 

 queens which they raised, came forth, and destroyed the 

 other while still in her cell. 'The bees had now dwindled 

 away to less than half their original nuniber, and the new 

 queen had wings so imperfect that she was unable to fly. 

 I watched their proceedings with great interest ; they actu- 

 ally paid very unusual attention to this crippled queen, and 

 treated her more as they are wont to treat a fertile one. In 

 the course of a week, there were not more than a dozen 

 left in the hive, and in a few days more, I missed the queen, 

 and saw only a few disconsolate wretches crawling over the 

 deserted comb I Shame upon the faint-hearted and coward- 

 ly of our own race, who, if overtaken by calamity, instead 

 of nobly breasting the dark waters of atfliction, and manfully 

 buffetting with their tumultuous waves, meanly resign them- 

 selves to their ignoble fate, and sink and perish where they 

 might have lived and triumphed ; and double shame upon 

 those who thus " faint in the day of a4versity," when 

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