LOBS OF THE QUEEN. 
215 
by side, over a trench, so that, through ventilators in their 
bottom-boards, they might receive, in Summer, a cooler, 
and in Winter, a much warmer air, than the external 
atmosphere. By this arrangement — which failed entirely 
to answer its design—many of my colonies became queen¬ 
less, and I soon ascertained under what circumstances 
young queens are ordinarily lost. 
From the great uniformity of the hives in size, shape, 
color, and height, it was next to impossible for a young 
queen to be sure of returning to her hive. The difficulty 
was increased, from the fact that the ground before the 
trench was free from bushes or trees, and no hive—except 
the two end ones, which did not lose their queens — could 
have its location more easily remembered, from its relative 
position to some external object. Most of the hives thus 
placed, which had young queens, became queenless, al¬ 
though supplied with other queens, again and again ; and 
many, even of the workers, were constantly entering hives 
adjoining their own. 
If a traveler should be carried, in a dark night, to a 
hotel in a strange city, and on rising in the morning, 
should find the streets filled with buildings precisely like it, 
he would be able to return to his proper place, only by pre¬ 
viously ascertaining its number, or by counting the houses 
between it and the corner. Such a numbering faculty, 
however, was not given to the queen-bee; for who, in a 
state of nature, ever saw a dozen or more hollow trees or 
other places frequented by bees, standing close together, 
precisely alike in size, shape, and color, with their en¬ 
trances all facing the same way, and at exactly the same 
heigtit from the ground! 
On describing to a friend my observations on the loss of 
queens, he told me that in the management of his hens, 
he had fallen into a somewhat similar mistake. To econo- 
