LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 261 



sion, while his joy-quickened steps proclaim that he feels that 

 there is no place like the cheerful home where his chosen 

 wife and companion presides as its happy and honored 

 Queen.* If your home is not full of dear delights, try all 

 the virtue of winning words and smiles, and the cheerful 

 discharge of household duties, and exhaust the utmost pos- 

 sible efficacy of love, and faith, and prayer, before those 

 words of fearful agony, 



" Anywhere, anywhere 

 Out of the world ! " 



are extorted from your despairing hps, as you realize that 

 there is no home for you, until you have passed into that 

 habitation not fashioned by human hands, or inhabited by 

 human hearts. 



609. The neglect of a colony to expel drones (192), 

 when they are destroyed in other hives, is always a suspi- 

 cious sign, and generally an indication either that it has no 

 queen, or else a drone-laying one (134), or drone-laying 

 workers (176). A colony, in these circumstances, will not 

 even destroy the drones of other hives, which may come to 

 it, until a healthy queen has been raised in the hive, and is 

 fertilized (120), and laying worker-eggs. 



610. In opening a queenless hive, the plaintive hum of 

 the bees (76), the hstless and intermittent vibrating of 

 their wings, and the total lack of eggs, or young worker 

 brood, tell their condition. 



A comb, with hatching bees,t should be given to it from 



•' ' The tenth and last species of women were made ont of a bee; and happy 

 Is the man who gets such a one for his wife . She is full of virtue and prudence, 

 and is the test wife that Jnpiter can bestow."— Si'bctator, No. 209. 



t That class of bee-keepers who suppose that aU sijch operations are the 

 "new fangled' ' inventions of modern times, will be surprised to learn that Col- 

 nmella, 1800 years ago, recommended strengthening feeble colonies, by cuititig 

 out combs from stronger ones, containing workers * * just gnawing out of their 

 eeUa." 



