s, imagine that it was peopled by the same individuals, not one
of whom might then be living.

"Like leaves on trees, the race of bees is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the Spring or Fall supplies,
They droop successive, and successive rise."

The cocoons spun by the larvae, are never removed by the bees; they stick
so closely to the sides of the cells, that the knowing bee well
understands that the labor of removal would cost more than it would be
worth. In process of time, the breeding cells become too small for the
proper development of the young. In some cases, the bees must take down
and reconstruct the old combs, for if they did not, the young issuing
from them would always be dwarfs; whereas I once compared with other
bees, those of a colony more than fifteen years old, and found no
perceptible difference. That they do not always renew the old combs,
must be admitted, as the young from some old hives are often
considerably below the average size. On this account, it is very
desirable to be able to remove the old combs occasionally, that their
place may be supplied with new ones.

It is a great mistake to imagine that the brood combs ought to be
changed every year. In my hives, they might, if it were desirable, be
easily changed several times in a year: but once in five or six years is
often enough; oftener than this requires a needless consumption of honey
to replace them, besides being for other reasons undesirable, as the
bees are always in winter, colder in new comb than in old. Inventors of
hives have too often been, most emphatically "men of one idea:" and that
one, instead of being a well established and important fact in the
physiology of the bee, has frequently, (like the necessity for a yearly
change of the brood combs,) been merely a conceit, existing nowhere but
in the brain of a visionary projector. This is all harmless enough,
until an effort is made to impose such miserable crudities upon an
ignorant public, either in the shape of a patented hive, _or worse
still, of an UNPATENTED hive, the pretended RIGHT to use which, is
FRAUDULENTLY sold to the cheated purchaser_!!

For want of proper knowledge with regard to the age of bees, huge "bee
palaces," and large closets in garrets or attics, have been constructed,
and their proprietors have vainly imagined that the bees would fill
them, however roomy; for they can see no reason why a colony shoul