BREEDING. 63 
progress, or when they cease. A kina of an idea 
that one swarm, and occasionally two or three, are 
reared sometime in J une, or fore part of summer, is 
about the extent of their reflections on the subject. 
Whether the drones deposit the eggs, or that a portion 
of the workers are females, and each raise a young 
one or two, or whether the “king bee” is the chap 
for laying eggs, is a matter beyond their ability to an- 
swer. It is but a few years since, that a correspondent 
of a Journal of Agriculture denied the existence of a 
queen bee, giving the best reasons he had, no doubt, 
that is, he had never seen one. But bee-keepers of 
this class are so few, it is unnecessary to waste 
time to convince them ; suffice it to say, that a queen 
exists with every prosperous swarm, and all apiarians 
with much pretensions to scicmce, acknowledge the 
fact, also, that she is the mother of the whole family. 
The period at which they commence depositing 
eggs probably depends on the strength of the colony, 
amount of honey on hand, &c., and not the time 
they commence gathering food. 
GOOD STOCK SELDOM WITHOUT BROOD. 
I once removed the bees from a hive on the tenth 
of January, and found brood amounting to about five 
hundred, scaled over, and others in every stage of 
growth down to the egg. • 
This hive had been in the house, and kept warm; 
it will doubtless be supposed that being kept warm 
was the cause; but this is not a solitary instance. A 
neighbor lost a hive the fourteenth February, in 
