4i6 



AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



either through a jet or spray of water directed upon it, or by 

 beating tin pans or making some other noise. When the swarm 

 has settled, the bees can be shaken into a receptacle, and if the 

 queen is contained in the mass, as she usually is, they make 

 themselves at home readily in any hive to which they may be 

 transferred, especially if it contains a small supply of food or a 

 piece of comb, full or empty. Work is then started at once, and 

 the colony is soon in full swing. From a sound colony there may 

 be several swarms in the course of a season ; but if times have been 

 bad and the bees have not increased sufficiently to warrant it, 

 there is no swarming, and nothing is placed in the way of the old 

 queen to prevent her from killing her immature rivals, unless, 

 indeed, the bees decide that she is worn out and incapable of 

 supplying a sufficient quantity of eggs, in which case they permit 

 one or more young queens to come to maturity and let them 

 fight it out. The victress remains queen of the hive, and if it is 

 the young female, the inhabitants transfer their allegiance to her 

 without question, and serve her as faithfully as they did their 

 original ruler. If by any chance the bees lose their queen, and 

 have no royal larvae, they take worker eggs or very young 

 larvae, and by proper care and feeding make queens of them : 

 royalty in this case being a mere matter of diet. 



As to the practical part of bee-keeping, and the details neces- 

 sary, there are many books especially written to give that infor- 

 mation, and it forms no part of the purpose of the present treatise. 

 The object here has been to give merely a sufficient insight into 

 the working of the hive to indicate the use that is made of the 

 pollen and its importance in the economy of bee life. It is the 

 necessity of having food for the larvae that keeps the insects 

 constantly at work and makes them so effective as pollenizers. 

 Visiting, as they must do, a great number of flowers to obtain 

 sufficient pollen for a load, they call at many trees, often far 

 apart and of different varieties, securing the cross-pollination so 

 necessary to many plants. They usually visit one kind of flower 

 only, and I have tested several specimens by microscopic investi- 

 gation, finding always one form of pollen only. 



Bumble-bees have been already mentioned, and resemble in 

 their economy somewhat the hive-bee, save that here, as in the 

 wasps, the colony, excepting only the fully developed females, 



