400 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
The worker bees are annual insects, though the queen will sometimes 
live more than two years; but, as every swarm consists of old and young, 
this is no argument for burning them. It is a saying of bee-keepers in 
Holland, that the first swallow and the first bee foretel each other.’ This 
perhaps may be correct there; but with us the appearance of bees con- 
siderably precedes that of the swallow ; for when the early crocuses open, 
if the weather be warm, they may always be found busy in the blossom, 
The time that bees will inhabit the same stations is wonderful. Reau- 
mur mentions a countryman who preserved bees in the same hive for 
thirty years.? Thorley tells us that a swarm took possession of a spot 
under the leads of the study of Ludovicus Vives in Oxford, where t ey 
continued a hundred and ten years, from 1520 to 1630.5 These circum- 
stances have led authors to ascribe to bees a greater age than they can 
claim. Thus Mouffet, because he knew a bees’ nest which had remained 
thirty years in the same quarters, concludes that they are very long-lived, 
and very sapiently doubts whether they even die of old age at all!* which 
is just as wise as if a man should contend, because London had existed 
from before the time of Julius Czesar, that therefore its inhabitants must 
be immortal. 
Bees are subject to many accidents ; particularly, as I have said above, 
they often fall or are precipitated by the wind into water; and though like 
the cat a bee has not nine lives, nor 
“Nine times emerging from the crystal flood, 
She mews to every watery god,” 
yet she will bear submersion nine hours ; and, if exposed to sufficient heat, 
be reanimated. In this case their proboscis is generally unfolded, and 
stretched to its full length. At the extremity of this, motion is first per- 
ceived, and then at the end of the legs. After these symptoms appear, 
they soon recover, fold up the tongue, and plume themselves for flight’ 
Experimentalists may therefore, without danger, submerge a hive of bees 
when they want to examine them particularly, for they will all revive upon 
being set to the fire. Reaumur says that in winter, during frosts, the bees 
remain in a torpid state. He must mean severe frosts; for Huber relates 
an instance, when upon a sudden emergency the bees of one of his hives 
set themselves to work in the middle of January ; and he observes that 
they are so little torpid in winter, that even when the thermometer abroad 
is below the freezing point, it stands high in populous hives. Swammer- 
dam, and after him the two authors last quoted, found that sometimes, even 
in the middle of winter, hives have young brood in them, which the bees 
feed and attend to.® In an instance of this kind, which fell under the eye 
of Huber, the thermometer stood in the hive at about 92°. In colder cli- 
mates, however, the bees will probably be less active in the winter. ‘They 
are then generally situated between the combs towards their lower part 
1 Swamm. Bib. Nat. ed. Hill. i. 160. 
2 Ubi supra, 665. 5 178, 
4 Theatr. Ins. 21. 5 Reaum, y. 640. 
® January 11, 1818. My bees were out, and very alert this day. ‘The thermo- 
meter stood abroad in the shade at 514°. When the sun shone there was quite a 
cluster of them at the mouth of the hives, and great numbers were buzzing about 
in the air before them, : 
