d not
continue to increase indefinitely, until at length it numbers its
inhabitants by millions or billions! As the bees can never at one time
equal, still less exceed the number which the queen is capable of
producing in one season, these spacious dwellings have always an
abundance of "spare rooms." It seems strange that men can be thus
deceived, when often in their own Apiary, they have healthy stocks which
have not swarmed for a year or more, and which yet in the spring are not
a whit more populous than those which have regularly parted with
vigorous swarms.

It is certain that the Creator, has for some wise reason, set a limit to
the increase of numbers in a single colony; and I shall venture to
assign what appears to me to have been one reason for His so doing.
Suppose that He had given to the bee, a length of life as great as that
of the horse or the cow, or had made each queen capable of laying
daily, some hundreds of thousands of eggs, or had given several hundred
queens to each hive, then from the Very nature of the case, a colony
must have gone on increasing, until it became a scourge rather than a
benefit to man. In the warm climates of which the bee is a native, they
would have established themselves in some cavern or capacious cleft in
the rocks, and would there have quickly become so powerful as to bid
defiance to all attempts to appropriate the avails of their labors.

It has already been stated, that none, except the mother wasps and
hornets, survive the winter. If these insects had been able, like the
bee, to commence the season with the accumulated strength of a large
colony, long before its close, they would have proved a most intolerable
nuisance. If, on the contrary, the queen bee had been compelled,
solitary and alone, to lay the foundations of a new commonwealth, the
honey-harvest would have disappeared before she could have become the
parent of a numerous family.

In the laws which regulate the increase of bees as well as in all other
parts of their economy, we have the plainest proofs that the insect was
formed for the special service of the human race.

THE PROCESS OF REARING THE QUEEN MORE PARTICULARLY DESCRIBED.

If in the early part of the season, the population of a hive becomes
uncomfortably crowded, the bees usually make preparations for swarming.
A number of royal cells are commenced, and they are placed almost always
upon those edges of the combs which are not attached to the sid