Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/291

Rh are of opinion, that he picks out only the drones, and never injures the working-bees. Be that as it may, he certainly gives a preference to one bee, and one species of insect over another." Advancing southwards, we fall in with the bees of Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, &c. If Latreille be correct—and we are disposed to think he is—these are still of the European species; for he tells us, that they extend from the northern States as far south as the Antilles. In the rich provinces above named, bees are reported to increase with such rapidity, that nothing but the most satisfactory proofs can entitle the report to credit. A striking instance of this rapid increase is given in Feburier's Treatise on Bees. M. Bozc, the French Consul in Carolina, walking one morning in the woods adjoining his house, found a swarm of bees which the negroes had just deprived of its honey and wax. He succeeded in getting it to enter his hat, brought it home, and put it into a hive. By the end of autumn, it had yielded eleven swarms, and these had, one with another, produced as many more; so that at the end of the year he had twenty-two! besides losing several for want of hives to lodge them. In the island of Cuba, their multiplication is said to be still more extraordinary; so much so, that though they have not existed there above seventy years, thousands of swarms perish yearly from not finding suitable places to settle in. They were introduced into this island in 1763, by some emigrants from Florida; and such was the rapidity with which