_In favourable seasons, a good stock will throw off three swarms, even a swarm of the current year will sometimes throw off another swarm_; in this latter case, there is but a small collection of honey, compared with the great number of bees which have been called into existence. I have endeavoured to account for this in page 113. In the Monthly Magazine, for Sept. 1825, an instance is recorded of five swarms being thrown off and hived before the end of July from planting one single stock; the season was favourable, and the situation, (High Armaside in Lorton), particularly so. They were not all thrown off from the first or parent stock, but from that and the earliest swarm. Bosc, the French consul in Carolina, has stated that he had eleven swarms in one season from a single stock; and that each of those swarms, during the same season, threw off the same number of secondary ones!!!! The space which usually intervenes between the first and second swarm is from seven to nine days; between the second and third, the period is shorter; and if there should be a fourth, it may depart the day after that which precedes it. This succession of swarms must be owing to the great number of young queens that obtain their liberty. As they greatly weaken the parent stock, and are naturally weak themselves, the only resource under such circumstances is the union of two or more of the swarms into one family. _March is the month in which the grand laying of the queen usually commences_; yet when January proves mild, the breeding will sometimes begin at the latter end of _that_ month, and it is by no means an uncommon thing for the commencement to happen in February. The queen-bee may naturally be expected to breed earlier in the season than insects in general, from the circumstance of the working-bees storing up food for the young, which other insects, that breed later, do not; as also from her living in the midst of a society which preserves a summer heat during the coldest months of winter. A thermometer in a bee-hive has ranged as high as 74° Fahrenheit at Christmas; and Bonner says that he has often seen his hives with young brood in them in the midst of a severe frost. In the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. +Mr. Hubbard+ has stated that vigorous well-stored hives breed even in the depth of winter. In this perhaps he was mistaken; the finding of eggs and maggots in the cells does not satisfy my mind, as they might have been laid late in the autumn, and have remained stationary till spring. Riem states, that in a bad season the eggs will remain in the cells many months without hatching. Mr. Hubbard was led to make the experiment of suffocating a strong stock in February, to ascertain the state of the brood-combs; in which he says that he found an abundance of brood, in every state, from that of egg to the almost perfect fly; although the preceding January had been very cold, accompanied by frost and snow,--a