78 PHYSIOLOGY OP 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 Pall supplies. 

 They droop successive, and successive rise.' " 



Evans. 



Apiarists, unaware of the brevity of the bee's hfe, 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, 

 which, 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 lajang dailj- 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. 



