a little honey as well as a little saliva, together with a minute. drop of formic acid which acts as a preservative. The need of honey in the hive surpasses that of pollen, and the honey-cells are more numerous than "bee-bread" cells. The stored honey and pollen serve for the daily food of the workers, the drones, and the queen, but in a healthy hive there is a surplus store, and this surplus store enables the community of honey-bees to last year after year, whilst the existence of, say, a wasp nest depends on the success of a single individual in tiding over the winter months. Although in the winter the activities of the hive drop to a minimum, still there is some movement of the bees and so food is imperative.

The fresh nectar poured out of the body of the bee contains 80 per cent of water and is very fluid. Why it remains in the cell and does not pour out before the cell is "capped" is rather a mystery. Truly, the cells are tipped a little upwards, but not enough to explain this; later, when it thickens into honey, it may be said to be too viscous to flow out, yet if the comb be lightly shaken down, it comes in a sweet and sticky stream. One of the most interesting factors in the conversion of nectar to honey is the removal of the superfluous water. The workerbees after a hard day in the field return to the hive, and after depositing their evening harvest, take their stand in serried rows and begin fanning with their wings. Tireless and apparently without fatigue, they continue this exercise hour after hour until the rising of the sun recalls them to their harvest fields. A good hive will in the course of a night drive out of a skip an amount of aqueous vapor equivalent to 1.5 litres of water, and so gradually the amount of water is reduced from 80 per cent in the nectar to 25 per cent in the honey. Both workercells and drone-cells are used for storing honey, and if the supply necessitates the building of new cells to house the precious fluid, drone-cells are built, for they are easier to construct and require comparatively less wax.

Dr. Stadler has made an ingenious calculation as to the number of journeys a worker-bee makes at harvest time, and arrives at the conclusion that each bee makes between seventy-five and

one hundred flights a day. Even bee protoplasm cannot stand such a life. Working like the students at Osborne or Dartmouth "at the double" all day, standing with vibrant wings all night, occupied with the cares of the hive in between times, never having any sleep, never taking any rest, it is little wonder that the frail body of the worker is at the height of the season worn out in five or six weeks. True to her devotion to the cleanliness of the hive, she usually dies outside it, but if by any chance she dies inside, the body is removed by the survivers like any other piece of lumber. Virgil's statement put into English by Dryden :

"Their friends attend the hearse, the next relations mourn

cannot be justified even by poetic licence. Their friends and relations are totally indifferent. Bees know neither love nor regret.

It is the general rule amongst the social Hymenoptera that new colonies are started by the unaided efforts of a single queen, but this rule is broken by the honey-bee. Here the queen, when starting a new colony, is accompanied by a large number of workers and a few drones, the whole constituting the swarm The preliminaries to swarming are many; the first is the laying of unfertilized eggs in the drone-cells, old or new, for the drones take the longest time in reaching maturity; then a certain number of queen-cells are built and provided with fertilized eggs, laid one after another so that they will be ripe for entrance into the hive at successive intervals of forty-eight hours. When once the cover is placed on the first of these royal cells, which hang usually to the number of six or eight from the lower edge of a comb, with the mouth downwards, the reigning queen becomes restless. She intermits her egg-laying, moves uneasily hither and thither, and with an unbridled jealousy tries to break into the royal cells and so destroy her royal offspring and possible successors. These, however, are safely guarded by the workers, and seldom does she succeed. If the weather be favorable, and if the provision of honey and bee-bread be ample, the workers are also seized with the demon of unrest.

Those

engaged in collecting nectar and honey cease their labors and remain at home. On a still, warm day in May or June, numerous bees may be seen resting and motionless outside the hive; these are joined by others, and gradually they all collect together and hang like a beard in front of the hive. More bees attach themselves to the beard, and then suddenly the whole thing breaks up and the constituent bees pour into the hive and fill themselves up with honey as a provision for their future home. The excitement within the hive increases, the noise becomes louder and louder, and then suddenly a vast stream of bees, both workers and drones, with their queen, pours out of the mouth of the hive in a state of delirious tumult. Soon, however, they settle on some bough or wall chosen by the queen. Some hang to the support, the others hang on to them. The queen is hidden within the living, seething mass. Here the swarm may hang for hours and even for days, but, as a rule, within a few hours they are guided by certain scouts, who have been investigating the possibilities of the neighborhood, to some hollow tree or shelter under a roof, and to this retreat the whole swarm flies by the shortest possible route. The workers at once set to work to clean the new hive and to prepare the comb, and as soon as possible the queen resumes her interminable egglaying. It may be noted that whilst thus swarming, the queen sees the light for the second time in her life. When swarming, bees are very loath to sting, and, according to Latter, should they do so, the sting is "comparatively innocuous." An average swarm is about the size of a football and weighs about four pounds.

The hive which the swarm has left has for the time no queen, though potentialities of royalty exist in the numerous royalcells. As soon as the first of these young queens is ready to emerge, she bites through the cover of her cell, aided by some of the workers, and steps into the hive; but this does not take place until eight days have elapsed since the swarming. As soon as the young queen has been cleaned and has acquired a little strength, and her wings have hardened, she begins to move about, and when she becomes aware of the other royal-cells with

the pupa of her sisters therein, she becomes violently excited, utters a well-known war-note, and attempts to tear open the cell of the oldest. Sometimes this is permitted, and the ruthless young monarch slays with her sting in turn the whole succession of royal infants. Should her strength fail her, the slaughter is continued by the workers, who in any case greedily consume what royal jelly is left in the cells, and draw the corpses of their victims out of the cells and cast them out of the hive.

This process of slaughter is, however, a very risky proceeding, for if anything should happen to the conquering and sole remaining queen on her wedding flight, or at any other time, and if there were no larvæ under three days of age (these can be reared into queens by a continuous diet of royal jelly), the hive would become queenless, and a queenless hive rapidly falls into a state of "death, damnation, and despair." Therefore the bees usually guard the cells until the first queen has been fertilized and has returned to the hive, and also until it has been clearly settled that a second swarming is not to take place, for in that case the first hatched queen would lead the swarm, and one of her sisters would be wanted to replace her in the hive. Should there be a second swarm, it will centre round the young queen as yet unfertilized, and it may be that some of her sisters may then escape and join the swarm, in which case it either breaks up into as many small swarms as there are queens, or the queens fight till but one remains, or the workers put all to death save one. A fight between two queens is a venomous and a deadly affair. Although sisters, although members of the same exalted and exiguous caste, they seem to be animated by the bitterest hatred, yet so strongly implanted in their being is their devotion to the future of the community, that when, as they sometimes do, they get into a mutually murderous position where a stroke of the sting of each would kill the other, they immediately cease fighting and retire trembling for a time, apparently appalled at the prospect of the queenless hive which would result from their killing each other. After a time, however, the combat is renewed and one or other is slain.

Sometimes, when a second queen enters the hive and the

reigning queen is busy laying eggs, the presence of the intruder is concealed, and a crowd of workers surrounds her on every side, "balling" her in until she dies of hunger and suffocation, but they never sting her to death.

For the first few days (from two to six after her birth) the young queen shows no disposition to be married. Then a change occurs. She becomes restless, runs to the hive mouth and back, presently makes a short experimental flight, for the first time seeing the sun and inflating to the full her breathing tubes. Soon she takes wider flights, always keeping her head directed to the hive. After a time she is followed by a group of drones, and as she towers into space, one by one these suitors drop off until one, the strongest, remains to mate with her high up in the heavens. The act of mating is fatal to the male. It is thought that he dies of nerve shock. Whatever the cause, most of his body falls dead to the earth, but he leaves part of it in the queen; this can only be removed when it has shrivelled up, and then, in some cases, only by the aid of the workers. The fertilized queen returns to the hive, having in her spermatheca no less than 200,000,000 spermatozoa, a supply equal to even her prodigious fecundity.

Once the queen is fertilized and has begun her ceaseless egglaying, the drones are more useless than ever. They have always been a nuisance in the hive, devouring the best honey, hustling the workers, impeding the work, and fouling the comb; for, unlike the workers, who can only rid themselves of undigested food when on the wing, the drones and the queen deposit their excreta in the hive for the workers to clear away. Useless, and a great drain on the hive, they are yet suffered to survive a little while, but in a few days that curious socialistic instinct that persistently impels the honey-bee to sacrifice the individual for the sake of the community - "l'esprit de la ruche" as Maeterlinck calls it is awakened, and the workers unite to destroy the drones, either by driving them forth, or by forcing them into an empty comb and starving them to death, or by savagely attacking them with sting and jaws, till they are killed outright.