THE SWARM 



WE will now, so as to draw more 

 closely to nature, consider the dif- 

 ferent episodes of the swarm as they come 

 to pass in an ordinary hive, which is ten 

 or twenty times more populous than an 

 observation one, and leaves the bees en- 

 tirely free and untrammelled. 



Here, then, they have shaken 6flF the 

 torpor of winter. The queen started laying 

 again in the very first days of February, 

 and the workers have flocked to the wil- 

 lows and nut-trees, gorse and violets, 

 anemones and lungworts. Then spring 

 invades the earth, and cellar and stream 

 [1] 



