246 
THE HIVE AND IIONEY-BEE. 
destiuetion is certain; while not unfrequently, after an 
experience of years, he does not believe that there is such 
a tiling as a .queen-bee! In the Chapter on the Loss of 
tile Queen, full directions have been given for protecting 
colonies in movable-comb hives, from a calamity which, 
more than all others—the want of food* excepted— 
exposes them to destruction. 
When a colony becomes hopelessly queenless, its 
destruction is certain. Even should the bees retain their 
wonted zeal in gathering stores and defending themselves 
against the moth, they must as certainly perish (p. 58) as a 
carcass must decay, even if it is not assailed by filthy flies 
and ravenous worms. Occasionally, after the death of the 
bees, large stores of honey are found in their hives. Such 
instances, however, though once not uncommon, are now 
rare; for a motherless hive is almost always assaulted 
by stronger stocks, which, seeming to have an instinctive 
knowledge of its orphanage, hasten to take possession 
of its spoils; or, if it escape the Seylla of these pitiless plun¬ 
derers, it is dashed upon a more merciless Charybdis, when 
the miscreant moths find out its destitution. Every year, 
multitudes of hives are bereft of their queens, most of 
which are either robbed by other bees or sacked by the 
moth, or both robbed and sacked, while their owner im¬ 
putes all the mischief to something else than the real cause. 
To one acquainted with the habits of the moth, the 
bee-keeper who is constantly lamenting its ravages, 
seems almost as much deluded as a farmer would be who, 
after diligently searching for his missing cow, and finding 
her nearly devoured by carrion worms, should denounce 
these worthy scavengers as the primary cause of her 
untimely end. 
* Colonies which are almost starved become almost as indifferent to the attacks 
of the moth as those which have no queen. 
