SWARMING AND HIVING. 137 



And soon her far-fetch'd ken discerns below 

 Tlie light laburnum lift her polish'd brow, 

 Wave her green leafy ringlels o'er the glade, 

 And seem to beckon to her friendly shade. 

 Swift as the falcon's sweep, the monarch bends 

 Her flight abrupt ; the following host descends. 

 Round (he fine twig, like cluster'd grapes, they close 

 In thickening wreaths, and court a short repose." 



Etahs. 



The swarming of bees, by making provision for the con- 

 stant multiplication of colonies, was undoubtedly intended 

 both to guard the insect against the possibility of extinction, 

 and to make its labors in the highest degree useful to man. 

 The laws of reproduction in those insects which do not live 

 in regular colonies, are such as to secure an ample increase 

 of numbers. The same is true in the case of hornets, wasps 

 and humble bees which live in colonies only during the warm 

 weather. In the Fall of the year, all the males perish, 

 while the impregnated females r«treat into winter quarters 

 and remain dormant, until the warm weather restores them 

 to activity, and each one becomes the mother of a new 

 family. 



The honey bee differs from all these insects, in being 

 compelled, by the laws of its physical organization, to live 

 in communities, during the entire year. The balmy breezes 

 of Spring will quickly thaw out the frozen veins of a torpid 

 wasp ; but the bee is incapable of enduring even a moderate 

 degree of cold : a temperature as low as 50° speedily chills 

 it, and it would be quite as easy to recall to life the stiffened 

 corpses in the charnel houses of the Convent of the Great 

 St. Bernard, as to restore to animation, a frozen bee. In 

 cool weather, they must therefore associate in large num- 

 bers, in order to maintain the heat necessary to their preser- 

 vation ; and the formation of new colonies, after the manner 

 of wasps and hornets, is clearly impossible. If the young 

 12* 



