other larvæ;. When the time arrives for them to
spin their cocoons, the entrance to the cells is
closed with peculiar care. The transformation
having been completed, the royal occupant
proceeds to cut her way out, an operation she is
not long in completing. Supposing, as does
occasionally happen, that two queens issue from
their respective cells at the same time, their first
act, as soon as they have had a little breathing-
time, is to attack each other. The war is
to the knife. There is no compromise, no
surrender; the least fortunate, or the weaker,
invariably receives her death-wound. During
this contest the workers assemble round them,
and, while observing a rigid impartiality be-
tween the combatants, effectually prevent either
of them from escaping from the ring until one
has achieved the victory, whom they forthwith
accept as their future sovereign. On no
account will they tolerate the presence of more
than one queen in a hive at the same time. A
close observer says that the queen selects her
husband from among the drones, and flies away with
him to spend their brief honeymoon among the
flowers. This is a pretty assumption, but hardly
capable of proof; it is more probable that polyandry
is practised among bees on a very extensive
scale. At the end of the summer, when the
functions of the drones, whatever they may be,
are at an end, they either receive an intimation
to quit the hive, or some instinct tells them that
mischief is brewing against them, for they
assemble in groups and await their fate with the
numbness of despair, or from a vague feeling
that they can offer something like an effectual
resistance if they are associated in a body;
probably the latter is the case; for, otherwise
there is nothing to prevent them from
abandoning the hive. As they have no stings, of
course they have not the shadow of a chance
when the contest begins, and they therefore
fall easy victims to the workers, though they do
sometimes offer a determined resistance;
preferring apparently to die in defence of their right
to a domicile, to becoming homeless vagabonds,
whose inevitable fate is to perish of cold or
hunger. After all, however, their case is not so
bad as it appears; they have fared like Dives all
the summer at the expense of the community,
and it can hardly be considered unjust that, at
the approach of winter when no more food
can be collected, they should be ordered to quit
the society, and not be allowed any longer to
partake of food which they have had no share in
collecting. In this respect the practice of bees
resembles that of certain savage tribes, who, in
famine-time, intimate to their aged parents that,
on a specified day, their sufferings will be
terminated, and, in accordance with this intimation,
bury them.

The working bees are smaller than the queen
bee or the drones. Upon them devolves all the
labour of keeping the hive clean, of collecting
the food for the royal table and the drones, and
of making a provision for the season when flowers
cease to bloom. Apart from the distinctions of
sex, size, and the absence of a sting in the drones,
the bodily formation is apparently alike in all the
classes; there is a powerful eye on either side of
the head, and three lesser ones on the top. To
communicate with each other, and to enable
them to build their cells with mathematical
precision, they are endowed with antennæ. With
the aid of these they work with as much
precision in what appears to us absolute darkness
(but which to them, with their numerous
eyes, may be light for aught we know), as they
could in a glass house. When a community
has multiplied to such an extent that the hive
is no longer capacious enough for the accommodation
of all, the queen quits it for a new
home, followed by a large proportion of her
subjects. The bee-keeper knows some hours
before the event, that it is in contemplation.
There is a great humming in the hive; the
only way of accounting for which is by
supposing that the intending emigrants are bidding
those they leave behind good-by. They have,
however, an exceedingly keen appreciation of the
comfort of a home in wet weather, and, if rain
begins to fall at the last moment when they are
on the very point of starting, they will never
think of coming out under such circumstances.
It is at such a time as this that the destructive
propensity of the queen is manifested. As the
moment when her successor will make her appearance
approaches, she becomes greatly agitated,
and, if she were not prevented by the workers,
would tear open the royal cells, and put the
occupants to death. When the swarm emerges
from the hive, it is a common practice in Wiltshire
(and possibly in other counties) for the
owner or some member of the family to take the
door key and a frying-pan, and beat the latter with
the key, with the view of preventing the bees from
flying to a distance. In a few minutes the queen
selects the spot on which she alights, and the
other bees follow her example. It is a curious
sight to see this dark bunch of bees clustered
together on a slender branch, weighing it down
beneath its living load. It is customary, in some
parts of the country, to guard against stings, by
fastening a veil over the face, and covering the
hands with a pair of leather or kid gloves. The
sting of a single bee is not of much consequence;
it smarts severely at first, but an efficacious
remedy is always at hand, in the shape of the
"blue" which laundresses use, common soap
scraped and spread on a bit of rag, or a little
tobacco well moistened with saliva; all old and
well-known cures. It might be as well to bear
this last remedy in mind at this particular season
when fruit is so abundant; for cases have occurred
where persons have been stung in the mouth or
throat from inadvertently swallowing a bee or
wasp which had buried itself in the fruit; and a
quid of tobacco is easily obtained. The hive is
held beneath the swarm, and they are either
shaken or brushed into it.
The first proceeding of the colony on