258 QUEEN KEARING. 



color, and height, it was next to impossible for a young 

 queen to be sure of returning to her hive. The difficulty 

 was increased, from the fact that the ground before the 

 trench was free from bushes or trees, and no hive — except 

 the two end ones, which did not lose their queens — could 

 have its location remembered, from its relative position to 

 some external object. Most of the hives thus placed, which 

 had young queens, became queenless, although supplied 

 with other queens, again and again ; and many, even of the 

 workers, were constantly entering hives adjoining their 

 own. 



504. If a traveler should be carried, in a dark night, to 

 a hotel in a strange city, and on rising in the morning, 

 should find the streets filled with buildings precisely like it, 

 he would be able to return to his proper place, only by pre- 

 viously ascertaining its number, or by counting the houses 

 between it and the corner. Such a numbering faculty, 

 however, was not given to the queen-bee ; for who, in a 

 state of nature, ever saw a dozen or more hollow trees or 

 other places frequented by bees, standing close together, 

 precisely alike in size, shape, and color, with their entran- 

 ces all facing the same way, and at exactly the same height 

 from the ground ? 



On describing to a friend our observations on the loss of 

 queens, he told us that in the management of his hens, he 

 had fallen into a somewhat similar mistake. To economize 

 room, and to give easier access to his setting hens, he had 

 partitioned a long box into a dozen or more separate apart- 

 ments. The hens, in returning to their nests, were deceived 

 by the similarity of the entrances, so that often one box 

 contained two or three unamiable aspirants for the honors 

 of maternity, while others were entirely forsaken. Many 

 eggs were broken, more were addled, and hardly enough 

 hatched to establish one mother as the happy mistress of a 

 flourishing family. Had he left his hens to their own in- 



