94 
in activity, abandon, for the purpose of converting them — 
into magazines, to be stored with honey. The queens, 
with their subjects, descend into the lower stories, where 
the labour is pursued with the most astonishing ardour. 
During the whole of this month, these insects are in a con- 
tinual agitation, from the dawn of day to the twilight of if 
e 
evening. . 
In this month, all the swarms are in a situation to se- 
cure their winter’s provisions, if the weather be favourable. 
Early swarms will sometimes produce other swarms; but 
it is best to make these return, either to the mother-hive, 
or join some other hive already well stocked with provi- 
sions for the winter. ‘They will continue to labour, during 
the remainder of the season, and the hive will become very 
rich. 
AUGUST. 
In this month the bees swarm less frequently than in 
the preceding. But they sometimes come off as late as 
the 15th, and sufficiently vigorous to procure their win- 
ter’s provision. The materials are still abundant. The 
buckwheat begins to brown in August, but the vegetation 
“of the trees is renewed, and the transudation assures the 
bees a continuation of an abundant harvest. They profit 
by it, and accumulate their stores. The queen continues 
to lay, and the drones to fecundate. But this lay will not 
hatch till the following year. It will then be its country’s 
hope, as it will furnish a new generation of drones, as those 
_ of the present year will cease to exist, as soon as they be- 
come useless. 
In this month particularly, nature presents a new phe- 
nomenon, whose results afford the bees a prolongation of 
harvest, as long as the frost will permit them to profit by 
it. In addition to the transudation of trees, there is an 
animal honey dew, for which we are indebted to the excre- 
mentous dejections of small black pucerons, or vegetable 
‘lice, which nature has appointed to intercept and pump out 
the juices of certain trees, such as the maple, the linden, 
chesnut, oak, &c., and by their dejections to provide a pro- 
fitable resource to bees, and to a thousand other insects 
which feed on it. ) . 
We have doubtless made as much, and perhaps more 
progress in the natural history of insects, than any other 
people on the globe; but if we carefully compare the sum 
