each lining: both together, therefore, soon render the cells unfit for use as brood-cells. +Mr. Hunter+ found three of these layers deposited in a single season, and counted upwards of twenty in the cells of an old comb; which, upon an average of three a year, would correspond with the period fixed by the ancients; though this observation by no means proves that the hive upon which it was made, or any other, might not have had a much more protracted existence. +Mr. Espinasse+ tells us that he once took a hive which had stood fourteen years, having found that it had become weak: it had nevertheless sent off a swarm the year previous. There is an instance or two on record, of one family having continued in the same hive for thirty years. One of these is mentioned by +Reaumur+, another by +Mouffet+. +Thorley+ speaks of a colony having occupied the same domicile for 110 _years_. The spot chosen was under the leads of the study of +Ludovicus Vives+ in Oxford: the original swarm settled there in 1520 and kept possession till 1630. Query,--may not the bees when the combs become very old and the cells much diminished in size, remove them and construct fresh ones? To those who may wish for their own satisfaction to examine the linings of a brood cell, I would observe, that +Mr. Hunter's+ mode of proceeding was, to soak the cell in water, till the linings were swelled, when he had no difficulty in separating and counting them: he found them separate most readily at the bottom, on account of the inclosed excrement. [Footnote Q: "Ergo ipsas quamvis angusti terminus ævi Excipiat, neque enim plus septima ducitur æstas." ] [Footnote R: "Durantque, si diligenter excultæ sint, in annos decem." +Columella+] [Footnote S: "Alveos nunquam Ultra decem annos durasse proditur." +Pliny+] To common observers it might appear, that the lives of the bees were coeval with the foundation of the colony, presuming upon all the young bees leaving the parent stock in swarms. But I have already stated that all swarms consist of a mixture of young and old bees; the difference between them is very distinguishable, those of the present year being brown, plump, and clothed with light hairs, whilst the old ones have red hairs, notched and ragged wings, and are paler and more shrunk in their bodies.