LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 275 



and languid. He confined her in a queen cage, and left 

 her in the hive. The bees clustered around Ihe cage ; but 

 next morning the queen was found to be dead. Here we 

 seem to have the commencement, progress and terminal ion 

 of super-annuation, all in the space of five or six weeks." 



In the Spring of the year, as soon as the bees begin to 

 fly, if their motions are carefully watched, the Apiarian may 

 even in the common hives, generally ascertain from their 

 actions, whether they are in possession of a fertile queen. 

 If they are seen to bring in bee-bread with great eagerness, 

 it follows, as a matter of course, that they have brood, and 

 are anxious to obtain fresh food for its nourishment. If any 

 hive does not industriously gather pollen, or accept the rye 

 flour upon which the others are feasting, then there is an 

 almost absolute certainty either that it has not a queen, or 

 that she is not fertile, or that the hive is seriously infested 

 with worms, or that it is on the very verge of starvation. 

 An experienced eye will decide upon the queenlessness, (to 

 use the German term,) of a hive, from the restless appear- 

 ance of the bees. At this period of the year when they 

 first realize the magnitude of their loss, and before they 

 have become in a manner either reconciled to it, or indiffer- 

 ent to their fate, they roam in an inquiring manner, in 

 and out of the hive, and over its outside as well as inside, 

 and plainly manifest that something calamitous has befallen 

 them. Often those that return from the fields, instead of 

 entering the hive with that dispatchful haste so characteristic 

 of a bee returning well stored to a prosperous home, linger 

 about the entrance with an idle and very dissatisfied appear- 

 ance, and ihe colony is restless, long after the other stocks are 

 quiet. Their home, like that of the man who is cursed rather 

 than blessed in his domestic relations, is a melancholy place : 

 and they only enter it with reluctant and slow-moving steps ! 



