226 
THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
(p. 51), by removing all excess of drone-comb from the 
breeding apartment.* 
In the Summer of 1853, I discovered that after a queen 
is taken from a paper cone (p. 159), the bees will run in 
and out of it for a long time, thus proving that they recog. 
nize iicr peculiar scent. It is this odor which causes them 
to run inquiringly over our hands, after we have caught a 
queen, and over any spot where she alighted when her 
swarm came forth. 
This scent of the queen was probably known in Aristo¬ 
tle’s time, who says: “ When the bees swarm, if the king 
(queen) is lost, we are told that they all search for him, 
and follow him with their sagacious smell, until they find 
him.” Wildman says: “The scent of her body is so at¬ 
tractive to them, that the slightest touch of her along any 
place or substance will attract the bees to it, and uiduce 
them to pursue any path she takes.”f 
The intelligent bee-keeper will readily perceive not only 
how the loss of queens may be remedied, by the movable- 
comb hive, but how apy operation, which in other hives 
is performed with difficulty, if at all, is in this rendered 
easy and certain. No hive, however, can make the 
ignorant or negligent very successful, unless they live in a 
region where the climate is so propitious, and the honey 
resources so abundant, th.at bees will prosper in spite of 
mismanagement or neglect. 
Those who have not the leisure or disposition to manage 
their own bees, may, with my hives, entrust the care of 
• If a numbor of dronea are conflnod In a small bor, they give forth a strong 
odor: Swammerdam supposed that the queen was impregnated by this scent 
( aura BemindliH ”) of tlie drones. 
t Before becoming acquainted with those authors, I supposed myself to hnv® 
made an original discovery. Mr. P. J. Mahan Informs me that after handling the 
queen ho has had bcos several times alight iijion his fingers, when he >vas a mile oi 
more from his Apiary. 
