ir work in the Spring, they give, as
previously stated, reliable evidence either that all is well, or that
ruin lurks within. In the common hives however, it is not always easy to
decide upon their real condition. The queenless ones do not, in all
cases, disclose their misfortune, any more than all unhappy husbands or
wives see fit to proclaim the full extent of their domestic
wretchedness: there is a vast amount of _seeming_ even in the little
world of the bee-hive. One great advantage in my mode of construction is
that I am never obliged to leave anything to vague conjecture; but I
can, in a few moments, open the interior, and know precisely what is the
real condition of the bees.

On one occasion I found that a colony which had been queenless for a
considerable time, utterly refused to raise another, and devoured all
the eggs which were given to them for that purpose! This colony was
afterwards supplied with an unimpregnated queen, but they refused to
accept of her, and attempted at once to smother her to death. I then
gave them a fertile queen, but she met with no better treatment. Facts
of a similar kind have been noticed, by other observers: thus it seems
that bees may not only become reconciled, as it were, to living without
a mother, but may pass into such an unnatural state as not only to
decline to provide themselves with another, but actually to refuse to
accept of one by whose agency they might be rescued from impending ruin!
Before expressing too much astonishment at such foolish conduct, let us
seriously inquire if it has not often an exact parallel in our obstinate
rejection of the provisions which God has made in the Gospel for our
moral and religious welfare.

If a colony which refuses to rear another queen, has a range of comb
given to it containing maturing brood, these poor motherless innocents,
as soon as they are able to work, perceive their loss, and will proceed
at once, if they have the means, to supply it! They have not yet grown
so hardened by habit to unnatural and ruinous courses, as not to feel
that something absolutely indispensable to their safety is wanting in
their hive.

A word to the young who may read this treatise. Although enjoined to
"remember your Creator in the days of your youth," you are constantly
tempted to neglect your religious duties, and to procrastinate their
performance until some more convenient season. Like the old bees in a
hive without a queen, that seek only th