226 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
swarms will now and again settle in most incon- 
venient positions, or come off at most inconvenient 
times, or be lost by leaving when no watcher is 
at hand ; while, on the other side, the seemingly 
perverse insects often most tantilisingly idle, week 
after week, in big clusters at their hive door and 
swarm not. Unfavourable weather, also, will sometimes, 
after all things are ready, keep the queen back until 
the princess intended to succeed her is necessarily 
destroyed. 
But these evils, although the most conspicuous, are 
by no means the most important ones inseparably 
connected with natural modes of increase. An in- 
dication of two or three of those not at first 
apparent, will make clear my meaning. It has already 
• been pointed out (page 125) that the swarm departs, 
normally, so soon as the queen-cells are sealed, 
although frequently the bees leave several days 
earlier. Eight days subsequently, or thereabouts, the 
first princess hatches, and in seven days more, all 
things being favourable, mates, two days later de- 
positing her first eggs ; so that the parent stock is 
seventeen days at least without a fertile queen. 
This, occurring in the height of the laying season, is 
a far more serious check than the loss of the whole 
of the bees of the departed swarm, which probably 
did not contain more than 16,000, or at the most 
20,000, individuals (the number of bees in swarms is 
usually much overstated) ; for a present queen could, 
during that seventeen days, have deposited — according 
to her quality, the number of bees attending her, 
and the condition of her hive — between 30,000 and 
