NATURAL HISTORY OF THK IIONKY-BEE. 
.’ll 
climates, of which the bee is probably a native, they 
increase with astonishing rapidity.* Every new swarm, 
except the first, is led off by a young queen; and as she 
is never impregnated until she has been established as the 
head of a separate family, it is important that each should 
be accompanied by a goodly number of drones: this 
requires the production of a large number in the parent- 
hive. 
As this necessity no longer exists when the bee is 
domesticated, the breeding of so many drones should be 
discouraged. Trapsf have been invented to destroy them, 
but it is much better to save the bees the labor and ex¬ 
pense of rearing such a host of useless consumers. This 
can readily be done, when we have the control of the 
combs; for by removing the drone-comb, and supplying 
its place with worker-cells, the over production of drones 
may be easily prevented. Those who object to this, as 
interfering with nature, should remember that the bee is 
not in a state of nature; and that the same objection 
might, with equal force, be urged against killing oil' the 
supernumerary males of our domestic animals. 
When a new swarm is building its combs, if the 
honey-harvest is abundant, the bees will frequently con¬ 
struct an unusual amount of drone-combs, for storing it. 
In a state of nature, where bees have plenty of room, as 
in the hollow of a tree, or cleft of a rock, this excess of 
drone-comb will be used another season for the same pur¬ 
pose, and new worker-comb made to meet the enlarged 
wants of the colony; but in hives of a limited capacity 
this cannot be done, and thus many stocks become so 
crowded with drones as to be of little value to their owner. 
* At Sydney, in Australia, a single colony is stated to have multiplied to 300, in 
three yoars 
t Such traps were usod in Aristotle’s time. 
