able to tell at what time they commence, how they progress, or
when they cease. A kind of an idea that one swarm, and occasionally two
or three, are reared sometime in June, or fore part of summer, is about
the extent of their reflections on the subject. Whether the drones
deposit the eggs, or that a portion of the workers are females, and
each raise a young one or two, or whether the "king bee" is the chap
for laying eggs, is a matter beyond their ability to answer. It is but
a few years since, that a correspondent of a Journal of Agriculture
denied the existence of a queen bee, giving the best reasons he had, no
doubt, that is, he had never seen one. But bee-keepers of this class
are so few, it is unnecessary to waste time to convince them; suffice
it to say, that a queen exists with every prosperous swarm, and all
apiarians with much pretensions to science, acknowledge the fact, also,
that she is the mother of the whole family.

The period at which they commence depositing eggs probably depends on
the strength of the colony, amount of honey on hand, &c., and not the
time they commence gathering food.

GOOD STOCK SELDOM WITHOUT BROOD.

I once removed the bees from a hive on the tenth of January, and found
brood amounting to about five hundred, sealed over, and others in every
stage of growth down to the egg.

This hive had been in the house, and kept warm; it will doubtless be
supposed that being kept warm was the cause; but this is not a solitary
instance. A neighbor lost a hive the fourteenth February, in weather
cold enough to seal the entrance with ice, and smother the bees. I
assisted to remove the combs, and found young brood in abundance, from
the perfect bee, through all stages of growth. This stock had been in
the cold all winter. I have further noticed, when sweeping out the
litter under the hives early in spring, say the first of March, that
young bees would often be found under the best stocks. Hence it appears
there is but little time, and perhaps none, when our best stocks have
no broods. Yet stocks, when very weak, do not commence till warm
weather. It seems that a certain degree of warmth is necessary to
perfect the brood, which a small family cannot generate.

HOW SMALL STOCKS COMMENCE.

The first eggs are deposited in the centre of the cluster of bees, in a
small family; it may not be in the centre of the hive in _all_ cases;
but the middle of the cluster is the warmest place, wherever loca