468 ENEMIES OT BEES. 



three combs of brood crowded with bees, and seven others 

 that were a perfect mass of webs, spotted with excrements. 

 The bees were all on their combs and the moths on theirs ; 

 not one worm could be found on either of the three combs, 

 protected by the Italians. Both populations, the one of 

 bees, the other of moths, seemed to dwell harmoniously 

 near each other. 



814. The most fruitful cause of the ravages of the moth 

 still remains to be described. If a colony becomes hope- 

 lessly queenless (610), it mnst, unless otherwise destroyed, 

 inevitably fall a prey to the bee-moth. By watching, in glass 

 hives, the proceedings of colonies purposely made queen- 

 less, we have ascertained that they make little or no resist- 

 ance to her entrance, and allow her to lay her eggs where 

 she pleases. The worms, after hatching, appear to have 

 their own way, and are even more at home than the dispir- 

 ited bees. 



How worthless, then, to a hopelessly queenless colony, 

 are all the traps and other devices which, formerly, have 

 been so much relied upon. Any passage which admits a 

 bee is large enough for the moth, and if a single female 

 enters such a hive, she may lay eggs enough to destroy it, 

 however strong. Under a low estimate, she would lay, at 

 least, two hundred eggs in the hive, and the second genera- 

 tion will count by thousands, while those of the third will 

 exceed a million. 



The fact that hopelessly queenless stocks do not oppose 

 any effectual resistance to the moths or worms, has for a 

 long time been well known to the Germans. Mr. Wagner 

 informed us "that their best treatises, for many years, 

 speak of this as a settled fact, so that it has become an 

 axiom that, if a colony is overpowered by robber-bees, its 

 owner is not entitled to compensation, as it was, in all like- 

 lihood, queenless, and would certainly have been destroyed by 

 the moth." 



