SWARMING AND IIITING. 
119 
tionable, unless we can admit that bees have the faculty of 
flying in an “ air line," to a hollow tree which they have 
never seen, and which may be the only one among thous- 
ands where they can find a suitable abode. 
These views are confirmed by the repeated instances in 
which a few bees have been noticed inquisitively prying 
into a hole in a hollow tree, or the cornice of a building, 
and have, before long, been followed by a whole 
colony. 
Having described the method commonly pursued by a 
new swarm, when left to their natural instincts, we return 
to the parent-stock from which they emigrated. 
From the immense number which have abandoned it, 
we should naturally infer that it must be nearly depopu- 
lated. As bees swarm in the pleasantest part of the day, 
some suppose that the population is replenished by the 
return of large numbers from the fields ; this, however, 
cannot often be the case, as it is seldom that many are 
absent from the hive at the time of swarming. To those 
who limit the fertility of the queen to four hundred eggs 
a day, the rapid replenishing of a hive, after swarming, 
must be inexplicable ; but to those who have seen her lay 
from one to three thousand eggs a day, it is no mystery 
at all. Enough bees remain to carry on the domestic 
operations of the hive ; and as the old queen departs only 
when there is a teeming population, and when thousands 
of young are daily hatching, and tens of thousands rapidly 
maturing, the hive, in a short time, is almost as populous 
as it was before swarming. 
Those who suppose that the new colony consists wholly 
of young bees, forced to emigrate by the older ones, if 
they closely examine a new swarm, will find that while 
some have the ragged wings of age, others are so young 
as to be barely able to fly. 
