18 HONEY BEES. 
perception exactly alike, no difference in size, shape, 
color or action;—yet every bee of this vast number 
(which at some seasons of the year would amount to 
more than six hundred thousand bees) in these twenty 
hives knows its own hive, and if let alone will not enter 
any other, except it be for the purpose of securing the 
honey therein for its own use, or in other words to 
plunder and rob its neighbor. There is no intercourse 
between swarms; each is a separate colony governed by 
a queen. If through mistake the subjects of one enter 
the domain of another, a war of extermination is com- 
menced at once. To test this point, I changed two hives 
so that they were reversed, the one occupying the place 
of the other. This was done while the bees were out 
collecting honey in a warm day. The first bees that 
entered the hive were instantly killed, and this was kept 
up until the hives were set in their proper places. The 
ground in front of the hives was covered with hundreds 
of dead bees. A bee is killed almost instantly by the 
sting of another. 
The young bee on its first excursion from the hive 
does not leave its home without precaution. With a 
view to a safe return, it turns its head towards its home, 
rises slowly on the wing, at first describing a circle of 
only a few inches in diameter, as it recedes slowly back- 
ward, seeming to so mark every object surrounding the 
hive, as to enable it to return and enter, without the 
slightest danger of entering any other hive. Bees in 
spring, in their first flight, mark their location in this 
