dations of their colony, on fence rails, hay-stacks, or
other most unsuitable places.

I have been informed by Mr. Henry M. Zollickoffer of Philadelphia, a
very intelligent and reliable observer, that he knew a swarm to settle
on a willow tree in that city, in a lot owned by the Pennsylvania
Hospital; it remained there for sometime, and the boys pelted it with
stones, to get possession of its comb and honey.

The absolute necessity for scouts or explorers, is evident from all the
facts in the case, unless we admit that bees have the faculty of flying
in an air-line to a hollow tree, or some suitable abode which they have
never seen, though they cannot find their hive, if, in their absence, it
is moved only a few rods from its former position.

These obvious considerations are abundantly confirmed by the repeated
instances in which a few bees have been noticed prying very
inquisitively into a hole in a hollow tree or the cornice of a
building, and have been succeeded, before long, by a whole colony. The
importance of these remarks will be more obvious, when I come to discuss
the proper mode of hiving bees.

Having described the common method of procedure pursued by the new
swarm, when left without interference to their natural instincts, it is
time to return to the parent stock from which they emigrated.

In witnessing the immense number which have abandoned it, we might
naturally suppose that it must be almost entirely depopulated. It is
sometimes asserted that as bees swarm in the pleasantest part of the
day, the population is replenished by the return of large numbers of
workers that were absent in the fields; this, however, can seldom be the
case, as it is rare for many bees to be absent from the hive at the time
of swarming.

To those who limit the fertility of the queen to 200, or at most 400
eggs per day, the rapid replenishing of the hive after swarming, must
ever be a problem incapable of solution; but to those who have ocular
demonstration that she can lay from one to three thousand eggs a day, it
is no mystery at all. A sufficient number of bees is always left behind,
to carry on the domestic operations of the hive, and as the old queen
departs only when the population of the hive is super-abundant; and when
thousands of young bees are hatching daily, and often 30,000 or more,
are rapidly maturing, in a short time the hive is almost as populous as
it was before swarming. Those who assert that the new col