80 AN EASY METHOD 



If she finds empty cells in the hive, during the breeding 

 season, she will deposit eggs there, because it is her instinct 

 and nature to do so ; and the nature of the workers prompts 

 them to take care and nurse all the young larvce, labor and 

 collect food for their sustenance, guard and protect their 

 habitations, and do and perform all things in due obedience, 

 not to the commands of the queen, but to their own peculiar 

 instinct. 



It is found by experiment that bees will go to work, and 

 continue their labors with perfect regularity, with a dead 

 queen, as long as she is confined in the hive in such a manner 

 that the bees will keep her in motion ; but, as she is the only 

 female in the hive, no eggs will be laid, no brood-comb made, 

 and no young bees raised : notwithstanding there are plenty 

 of drones in the hive, as there are no grubs (larvce) to con- 

 sume the pollen, the comb will be unusually loaded with 

 bread ; and the bees will finally perish by the depredations 

 of the moths, or want of animal heat in the winter, which is 

 generated in the hive by a populous community only. 



We have demonstrated these facts by various experiments; 

 only one of which we will here record. On the 6th day of 

 July, 1838, we took a queen fi-om a first swarm out of the 

 same hive that season, and inserted a common pin through 

 her chest, which killed her immediately. We then confined 

 the queen with the pin in the centre of a fine but very strong 

 string, about eighteen inches in length, the ends of which we 

 fastened at the two opposite corners of the hive, near the top, 

 by means of little nails, in such a manner that her lifeless 

 majesty was suspended on one side of the hive against the 

 glass. We then let in the swarm and confined the bees in 

 the hive, until they had found their sovereign, and clustered 

 around her ; this done, we withdrew the gate from the 

 entrance of the hive, and gave the bees liberty to work. 

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