244 
THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
instead of being left where they may be attacked by the 
moth. 
The most fruitful cause of the ravages of the moth still 
remains to be described. If a colony becomes hopelessly 
queenless , it must , unless otherwise destroyed , inevitably 
fall a prey to the bee-moth. By watching, in glass hives, 
the proceedings of colonies purposely made queenless, I 
have ascertained that they make little or no resistance to 
her entrance, and allow her to lay her eggs where she 
pleases. The worms, after hatching, appear to have their 
own way, and are even more at home than the dispirited 
bees.* 
How worthless, then, to a quecnless colony, are all the 
traps and other devices which, of late years, have been so 
much relied upon. Any passage which admits a bee is 
large enough for the moth, and if a single female enters 
such a hive, she will lay eggs enough to destroy it, how- 
ever strong. Under a low estimate, she would lay, at 
least, two hundred eggs in the hive, and the second gene- 
ration will count by thousands, while those of the third 
M ill exceed a million. f 
Not only do the bees of a hopelessly quecnless hive 
* Tbo fact that quecnless stocks do not oppose any effectual resistance to the 
moths or worms — a fact which I once thought to bo a discovery of my own — has 
for a long time been well known to the Germans. Mr. Wagner informs mo “that 
their best treatises, for many years, speak of this as a settled fact, so that it has 
become an axiom that, if a colony is overpowered by robber-bees, its owner is not 
entitled to compensation, as it was , in all likelihood , queenless, and would cer- 
tainly have been destroyed by the moth. 
Mv attention has been recently called to an article in tho Ohio Cultivator for 
1849 page 185, by Mlcajah T. Johnson, in which, after detailing some experiments, 
he says:— “One thing is certain— if bees, from any cause, should lose their queen, 
and not havo the means in their power of raising auothor, the miller and tho 
worms soon take possession. I believe no hive is destroyed by worms whilo an 
efficient queen remains in it.” 
This seems to be the earliest published notlco of this important fact by any 
American observer. 
t Tills power of rapid increoso accounts for Judge Fisbback’a and Ur. Kirtland’a 
(acts respecting the rapid dissemination of tho moth. 
