Dangerous work it is at this season, yet most necessary. Without water the rearing of the young bees is impossible on any but the smallest scale. Water is needed at every stage of their development, and, lacking it, the progress of the colony must be fatally checked. Even the mature bees will starve and die in the midst of plenty, if their honey-stores are candied, and no water is available to dissolve the inassimilable sweets. The hive that shows honey crystals thrown down on the floor, and littering the entrance, is sure to be in desperate case. The bees are tearing open every store-cell, casting away the solidified honey as refuse, to get at the moister portion below. If the cold spell does not break, or the bee-master is unready with his artificial supplies, the colony must perish. So the water-bearers watch for the sunshine, and its first warm glance brings them out to rifle the nearest dewdrops, or track down by its bubbling music the hidden woodland stream. Many die at this work in the early months of the year, chilled by their load on the homeward journey, or snapped up by hungry birds. But at every cost the future life of the colony must be assured, though, of all the hive-people, none but the queen-mother will be alive to see it in its summer fulness. We are accustomed to think of a hive of bees as a permanent institution, Death playing his old, unceasing, busy part, but young Life more than outplaying him, just as the way is in a city-hive of men. The analogy holds good, but in bee-life the changes are infinitely more rapid. The life of the worker-bee extends, at most, to six months or so; and in the busy season she may die, worn out by labour, in as many weeks. The reapers of last year’s honey-harvest were dead by the autumn. The late-born bees, that went into winter quarters with polished thorax and ragged wings, survived only long enough to nurture their immediate successors; and these, again, will live but to bring to maturity the young spring-broods. Not a bee among them will ever again go honey-gathering. Except for the long-lived queen-mother, and the old hive and its furniture, each colony with every year becomes a totally new thing.