II 



THE SWARM 



WE will now, so as to draw more closely to nature, con- 

 sider the different 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 entirely free and untrammelled. 



Here, then, they have shaken off the torpor of, winter. 

 The queen started laying again in the very first days of Feb- 

 ruary, and the workers have flocked to the willows and nut- 

 trees, gorse and violets, anemones and lungworts. Then spring 

 invades the earth, and cellar and attic stream with honey and 

 pollen, while each day beholds the birth of thousands of bees. 

 The overgrown males now all sally forth from their cells, 

 and disport themselves on the combs ; and so crowded does 

 the too prosperous city become that hundreds of belated 

 workers, coming back from the flowers towards evening, will 

 vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced to spend the 

 night on the threshold, where they will be decimated by the 

 cold. 



Restlessness seizes the people, and the old queen begins 

 to stir. She feels that a new destiny is being prepared. She 

 has religiously fulfilled her duty as a good creatress ; and from 



