78 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
templating a populous city, and personally unacquainted 
with its inhabitants, should, on paying 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. 
‘Like leaves on trees, the race of bees is found, 
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground, 
Another race the Spring or Fall supplies, 
They droop successive, and successive rise.’ ” 
Evans. 
Apiarists, unaware of the brevity of the bee’s life, have 
often constructed huge ‘‘bee-palaces’’ and large closets, vain- 
ly imagining that the bees would fill them, being unable to 
see any reason why a colony should not increase until it 
numbers its inhabitants by millions or billions. But as the 
bees can never at one time equal, still less exceed, the num- 
ber which the queen is capable of producing in a season, 
these spacious dwellings have always an abundance of spare 
room. It seems strange that men can be thus deceived, 
when often in their own Apiary they have healthy stocks, 
whieh, though they have not swarmed for a year or more, 
are no more populous in the Spring, than those which have 
regularly parted with vigorous colonies. 
It is certain that the Creator has wisely set a limit to the 
increase of numbers in a single colony; and we shall venture 
to assign a reason for this. Suppose he had given to the 
bee a length of life as great as the horse or the cow, and had 
made each queen capable of laying daily some hundreds of 
thousands of eggs; or had given several hundred queens to 
each hive; then a colony must have gone on increasing, un- 
til it became a scourge rather than a benefit to man. In the 
warm climates of which the bee is a native, it would have 
established itself in some cavern or capacious cleft in the 
rocks, and would soon have become so powerful as to bid de- 
fiance to all attempts to appropriate the avails of its labors, 
