The cases which I have related, and others of a similar kind, have led to the erroneous opinion that bees are a long-lived race. But this, as +Dr. Evans+ has observed, is just as wise as if a stranger, contemplating a populous city, and personally unacquainted with its inhabitants, should on paying it a second visit, many years afterwards, and finding it equally populous, imagine that it was peopled by the same individuals, not one of whom might be then alive. "Such strangers are we to the honied hive, where, however quickly its generations may have passed away, the same face is presented to the beholder." "The race and realm from age to age remain, And time but lengthens with new links the chain." +Sotheby's Georgics.+ The usual term of the male's existence is two or three months only;--I say the usual term, for his life is always cut off by violence, when no peculiar circumstances arise to render his existence any longer useful. Such circumstances having arisen, as has been before observed, (page 44,) he may be kept alive a much longer period, for a year at least, but how much longer has not as yet been ascertained. With respect to the queen, by comparing what has been said above, as to insects not dying till their eggs are all matured, with what has been stated in page 31 of a single sexual union serving to impregnate all the eggs laid for the two succeeding years, it would appear that the period of her existence could not, in general, be less than two years; and +Huber+ has proved very satisfactorily, that this is the fact: indeed he states that he has known a queen live for five years. +Feburier+ suspects that, like the males, the queens are destroyed by the labourers, when they have fulfilled their destination. The only ground of this opinion, however, appears to be his having witnessed an attack made upon a queen by six labourers, from whom he with difficulty rescued her. +Messrs. Kirby+ and +Spence+, in like manner, seem to think it not improbable that when the workers become too old to be useful to the community, they are either killed or expelled the society. _Vide_ page 7. Reaumur also throws out a hint to the same purpose. The length of a working bee's life has not yet been ascertained; but the general opinion is that it is short-lived. +Butler+ says that "the bee is but little more than a year's bird;" and some think the period of its existence shorter still. "The bees of the present year," says +Butler+, "will retain their vigour and youthful appearance till (Gemini), about the 21st of May in the following year, when they begin to decline, and from (Cancer to Leo) June 21st to August 21st, the ground in front of the apiary may be seen strewed with them, some dead, some dying, and a few alive but incapable of rising again, and by (Libra) 32d September, scarcely an old bee will be left." CHAPTER XXXII. SENSES OF BEES.