THE WORKER-BEE. 



81 



The age which individual members of the community may 

 attain, must not be confounded with that of the colony. Bees 

 have been known to occupy the same domicile for a great 

 number of years. We have seen flourishing colonies more than 

 twenty years old; the Abbe Delia Rocca speaks of some over 

 forty years old ; and Stoche says that he saw a colony,' which 



Fig. 35. 



COMBS OP BEOOD. 



(Forty Years Among the Bees.) 



he was assured had swarmed annually for forty-six years! 

 Such cases have led to the erroneous opinion, that bees are 

 a long-lived race. But this, as Dr. Evans* has observed, is 

 just as wise as if a stranger, contemplating a populous city, 

 and personally unacquainted with its inhabitants, should, on 

 pajdng it a second visit, many years after, and finding it 

 equally populous, imagine that it was peopled by the same 

 individuals, not one of whom might then be living. 



* Dr. Evans was an English physician, and the author of a beauti- 

 ful poem on bees. 



