12 A BRIEF HISTOKT. 



combs are empty, and food abundant, tbey rear brood 

 more extensively than at any other period, (towards 

 fall more conibs are filled with honey, giving less 

 room for brood.) The hive soon becomes crowded 

 with bees, and royal cells are constructed, in which 

 the queen deposits her eggs. When some of these 

 young queens are advanced sufficiently to be sealed 

 over, the old one, and the greater part of her subjects, 

 leave for a new location, (termed swarming.) They 

 soon collect in a cluster, and, if put into an empty 

 hive, commence anew their labors; constructing 

 combs, rearing brood, and storing honey, to be aban- 

 doned on the succeeding year for another tenement. 

 One in a hundred may do it the same season, if the 

 hive is filled and crowded again in time to warrant 

 it. Only large early swarms do this. 



THEIR IKDUSTRT, 



Industry belongs to their nature. When the flow- 

 ers yield honey, and the weather, is fine, they need no 

 impulse from man to perform their part. When their 

 tenement is supplied with all things necessary to reach 

 another spring, or their store-house full, and no neces' 

 sity or room for an addition, and we supply them with, 

 more space, they assiduously toil to fill it up. Rather 

 than to waste time in idleness, during a bounteous 

 yield of honey, they have been known to deposit their 

 surplus in combs outside the hive, or under the stand. 

 This natural industrious habit lies at the foundation - 

 of all the advantages in bee-keeping ; consequently 

 our hives must be constructed with this end in view ; 



