220 
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 ner 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 induce 
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 any 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, that 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 number of drones are confined in a small box, they give forth a strong 
odor: Swammerdam supposed that the queen was impregnated by this scent 
( aura seminaUn ”) of the drones. 
t Before becoming acquainted with these authors, I supposed myself to have 
made an original discovery. Mr. 1'. J. Mahan informs me that after handling the 
queen bo has had bees several times alight upon his fingers, when he »vas a mile or 
more from his Auiary. 
