6 
BEE-CUI/TU11E. 
The bee moth or worm first appeared in the East about 
sixty years ago, but it is now found as generally as the bee. 
About twenty thousand, or from five to seven pounds of 
bees make a good swarm. Drones are the male bees, and 
sometimes there are several thousand of them in a hive, and 
sometimes none at all. Queens and workers arc females. 
The queen (there is but one in a hive) lays all the eggs. 
She ordinarily, in strong colonies, commences about the first 
of January, laying at first but a few dozen each day in the 
centre of the hive, where the bees all cluster to keep warm ; 
[for it is necessary that they should keep up nearly blood-heat 
all winter]. As the weather becomes warmer the number 
of the eggs laid gradually increases until about the first of 
May, when the number laid daily amounts to a thousand or 
more. And thus she continues to lay until the honey- 
gathering begins to diminish in August. The number of 
eggs laid diminishes gradually until in October, when it 
ordinarily ceases altogether, and the queen has one or two 
months’s rest. 
But some seasons bees do not swarm at all. What be- 
comes of so many bees if a thousand are produced daily, 
and there are no more in the hive in the fall than in the 
spring ? They die. The life of the worker will not average 
more than four months, whilst that of the queen is from 
three to five years. 
“Like leaves on trees the race of bees abound. 
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground 
Another race the spring or fall supplies, 
They droop successive, and successive rise.” — Evans. 
In midsummer, bees will venture out for honey at all haz- 
ards, exposing themselves to storms and birds, wearing out 
their wings, so that destruction is rapid. I have known 
whole colonies to perish thus in six weeks, and an entirely 
new stock to take their place. This is why a colony will 
soon dwindle to nothing if they have no queen to replace 
tlfeir loss. 
“ Tho race and realm from ago to'age remain. 
And time but lengthens with now links tho chain.” 
Bees will not leave their hive on account of the loss of 
their queen, except in the case of a young swarm, for the 
first day or two after being hived, but will remain and per- 
form their ordinary duties with a somewhat abated energy 
