IjO THE HIVE AND HONHY-BEE. 



for forty-six years ! " Sncli 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, con- 

 templating a populous city, and personally unacquamted 

 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. 



' LiUe leaves on treea, 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. 



The cocoons spun by the larvas are never removed by 

 the bees ; they adhere so closely to the sides of the cells, 

 that the labor of removal would cost more than it would 

 be worth. As the breeding cells may eventually become 

 too small for the proper development of the young, very 

 old combs should be removed from the hive. It is a great 

 mistake, however, to imagine that the brood-combs ought 

 to be changed every year. If it were desirable, this 

 might easily be done in my hives ; but to remove them 

 oftener than once in five or sLs years, requires a needless 

 consumption of honey to replace them, and injures the 

 bees in Winter, as the new comb is much colder than the 

 old. 



Inventors of hives have too often been " men of one 

 idea :" and that one, instead of being a well established 

 and important fact in the physiology of the bee, has fre- 

 quently (hke the necessity for a yearly change of the 

 brood-combs), been merely a conceit of some visionary 

 projector. This might be harmless enough, were no efibrt 

 made to impose such crudities ui)on an ignorant public, 

 either in the shape of a patented hive, or worse still, of a-' 



