21 
witnessing the scene of carnage, placed six hives 
on a glass table, and placed himself and an assist- 
ant beneath it. On the fourth of July, the work- 
ers actually massacred the males in the whole six 
hives, at the same hour, and with the same pecu- 
liarities. The glass table was covered with bees, 
full of animation, which flew on the drones, seized 
them by their antennae, the wings and limbs, and 
after having dragged them about, they killed the 
unfortunate victims, by repeated stings directed 
between the wi ngs of the abdomen. The moment 
that the formidable weapon touched them, was the 
last of their existence; they stretched their wings 
and expired. Whilst the season continues favor- 
able for -the collection of honey, bees labor from 
the dawn of day till evening : that they never 
cease to fill their magazines with honey, is not 
from a foreknowledge that a season is approach- 
ing, when their harvest will he denied them, but 
they are furnished by nature with tlm means of 
obtaining their food without thinking, or being 
capable of thinking of any precautions necessary 
for that purpose. Their nature requires that they 
gather honey and wax ; they apply themselves 
during the season of flowers with the greatest as- 
siduity, and on the return of winter their combs 
are filled with the “luscious hoard.” Reaumur 
has calculated that within one hour three thou- 
sand bees have returned from their collections to 
a hive whose population did not exceed eighteen 
thousand, and Swammerdam found nearly four 
thousand cells constructed in six days, by a new 
swarm which did not exceed six thousand bees. 
It is not uncommon among us, for a single swarm 
to collect from eighty to one hundred pounds ox 
