LOSS OF THE QUEEN. • 225 



He worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and yet 

 spendcth as much as two laborers: you shall never find 

 ■ his maw without a drop of the purest nectar. In the heat 

 of the day he flieth abroad, aloft and about, and that with 

 no small noise, as though he would do some great act ; 

 but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, 

 and then returns he presently to his cheer." 



It has already been stated (p. 51), that the bee-keepers 

 in Aristotle's time were in the habit of destroying the 

 excess of drones.- They excluded them from the hive — 

 when taking their accustomed airing — ^by contraeting the 

 entrance with a kind of basket work. Butler recommends 

 a similar trap, which he calls a " drone-pot^'' The arrange- 

 ment used in my hives to prevent swarming, wiU serve 

 also to exclude the drones. Towards dark, or early in the . 

 morning — when clustered, for warmth, in the portico — they 

 may be brushed into a vessel of water, and given to 

 chickens, which will soon learn to devour them. In ex- 

 cluding them from hives having an unimpregnated queen, 

 the entrance must be adjusted to let her pass. 



It is interesting to notice the actions of the drones 

 ■when they are excluded from the hive. For a while they 

 eagerly search for a wider entrance, or strive to force 

 tkeir bulky bodies through the narrow gateway. Finding 

 this to be in vain, they solicit honey from the workers, 

 and when refreshed, renew their efforts for admission, ex- 

 pressing, all the while, with plaintive notes, their deep 

 sense of such a cruel exclusion. The bee-keeper, however, 

 is deaf to their entreaties ; it is better for him that they 

 should stay without, and better for them — if they only 

 knew it — to perish by his hands, than to be starved or 

 butchered by the unfeeling workers. With movable- 

 comb hives, pity and profit may be perfectly reconciled 



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