28 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



pertinacity. Since a queen is essential to the ex- 

 istence of a stock, as she alone can produce eggs, 

 a new queen, under these circumstances, must be 

 produced, and so bees form queen cells, and previously 

 bring forward drones. The old mother departs with 

 the superabundance of the population. A queen, 

 matured soon after her migration, occupies her place 

 after having consorted with a drone, so as to secure 

 the honours of maternity. 



Such, in few words, is swarming. The swarm 

 needs powers we have not yet considered. Its new 

 house requires furnishing, and, to compass this, first 

 wax is secreted from the bodies of the workers, and 

 then, by an architecture which is rarely, if at all, 

 exceeded in beauty and adaptation even in the 

 insect world, combs are built of dainty purity and 

 almost mathematical exactitude ("almost" is here 

 said advisedly), and so a place is given, as the 

 cells multiply, for the eggs of the accompanying 

 mother and for the incoming riches brought home 

 by the never weary foragers ; and if weather be favour- 

 able, or, what is even better at this particular point, 

 the bee-keeper intelligent and attentive, our swarm 

 quickly passes into a stock, and will yield us all the 

 interesting points which have as yet occupied our 

 attention. It is now clear that the mysteries of the 

 economy of the hive, the varied instincts brought 

 into exercise, and the wondrously complicated and 

 delicately beautiful organisations of the little labourers 

 making their purposeful lives a possibility, will give 

 much occupation during succeeding chapters. 



