What one may call the local self-government, the bees' methods of dealing with their own affairs--such as the swarm, for instance, or the treatment of queens--these vary in every hive. Syrian hives have been known to produce 120 queens, whereas our own will never rear more than ten or twelve. In one hive in Syria 120 dead queen-mothers were found, together with ninety living ones. The bee is capable, too, of altering her ways, should conditions require it; of changing her methods. Take one of them to California or Australia, and her habits will become quite other than when she was in Europe. Having discovered that summer always abides in the land and that flowers never are absent, she will, after a time, be content to live from day to day, and gather only honey and pollen sufficient for her immediate requirements; and her observation of the new conditions will teach her that it is not necessary to make provision for the winter. All this she will learn in a year or two; and in fact it becomes necessary for the bee-keeper to deprive her of the fruits of her labor, in order to maintain her activity. Similarly it is said that, in the Barbadoes, the bees in such hives as are close to the sugar-refineries will entirely cease visiting the flowers, but will gather their store from the vast quantity of sweets that surround them. Of wild bees no less than 4500 varieties are known. Some naturalists believe that the "Prosopis," a little wild bee that is found all over the world, is the original kind from which all the others have sprung. This unfortunate little insect is to our domestic bee more or less what a cave-dweller would be to a highly-civilized man of to-day. You will probably more than once have seen it, hovering over the bushes in a deserted corner of your garden, and it will never have occurred to you that there, fluttering before you, was the first-comer of those to whom we probably owe most of our flowers and plants; for it is a fact that more than a hundred varieties of plants would disappear if they were not regularly visited by the bees.