Il 
THE SWARM 
2 
WE will now, so as to draw more closely to 
nature, consider 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 February, 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 
31 
