We hear now and then of a swarm of bees being lost, of its having eluded the vigilance of the proprietor; I think that its loss is generally attributable to negligence. As a different opinion is prevalent, I shall state a few of the facts upon which that difference is founded. +Homer+ and +Virgil+ speak of bees in their wild state as fixing their habitations in the rocks and in hollow trees. "As from some rocky cleft the shepherd sees, Clustering in heaps on heaps, the driving bees." +Pope's Homer.+ "And oft, ('tis said,) they delve beneath the earth, And nurse in gloomy caves their hidden birth, Amid the crumbling stone's dark concave dwell, Or hang in hollow trees their airy cell." +Sotheby's Georgics.+ Many instances are also recorded of domesticated bees seeking an asylum in some hollow part of an old building or tree. +Dr. Warder+, +Mr. Butler+, +Mr. Knight+, +Dr. Evans+, +M. Duchet+, and other writers think that the bees about to swarm regularly send out scouts, to explore an eligible situation for their future residence; though Dr. Evans admits that this disposition to resume wild habits, like many of the instinctive faculties of the animal creation, has its intensity weakened by domestication. Dr. Warder asserts that the bees always send out providers, to select a suitable residence for them, several days before swarming, and considers that their clustering upon a bough, &c. soon after they issue forth, proceeds from their desire to be all congregated together prior to the last flight: this is likewise the opinion of Mr. Knight. If the place selected be a deserted hive, it is first cleared by the bees of all heterogeneous matters, the old combs alone being allowed to remain. An observance of this conduct probably led +Columella+ to recommend the placing of empty hives, during the swarming season, in appropriate situations near an apiary. +Keys+ gives a similar recommendation. +Reaumur+ on the other hand ridicules the idea of "spies and quartermasters," as ingenious fable. What I have stated in Chapter XVII. p. 148. confirms Reaumur's opinion: he is also supported in it by +Buffon+, +Bonnet+, and +Huber+: the former says, that the swarming bees form a cloud round their queen, and set off without seeming to know the place of their destination;--"the world before them, where to choose their place of rest." I will however detail a few cases that support the theory of "spies and quartermasters." In the Philosophical Transactions for 1807, +Mr. Knight+, writing to Sir Joseph Banks, relates several instances of the kind. On one occasion he observed from twenty to thirty bees paying daily visits to some decayed trees, about a mile distant from his garden; the bees appeared to be busily employed in examining the hollow parts, and particularly the dead