When professional breeders of the honey-bee have succeeded in producing the much-desired non- race, and swarming has become a thing of the past, of the old “instinct” school will be able to turn their backs on at least one very question.  
There is no denying that the breeders are theoretically right in their present efforts.  The swarming-habit in the honey-bee is admittedly the main obstacle to large honey-takes; and now that two of the principal objects of swarming—the of stocks and of queens—are fairly well understood, and can be artificially effected, there is no doubt that the universal of a non-swarming strain throughout the bee-farms of the country, if such a thing were possible, would result in a very greatly increased honey-yield, and the people would get cheap honey.  But at present it is not easy to see that any progress whatever in this direction has been made.  The bees continue to , in spite of beautifully adjusted theories; and the old attempt to fit the square of instinct into the round hole of fact goes on as merrily as ever.
 
Students of bee-life, approaching the matter unencumbered by ancient , find themselves face to face with many surprising things, which would seem unexplainable on any other hypothesis than that the bees are endowed with reason, and that of no mean order.
 
Instinct implies invariability, a dead perfection of working blindly against all of circumstance, and always succeeding in the main.  But the very essence of reason, humanly speaking, is its imperfection and continual both in motive and performance.  Watching a swarm of bees from the moment of its issue from the hive, the first thing that strikes the unacademic observer is that most of the bees seem to have no notion at all as to what the furore is about.  They are by no means the obedient items of a common inexorable purpose.  They are more like a crowd of people running in a street, all with excitement and curiosity, but not one of them knowing the cause of the general stampede.  Sometimes a stock of bees will give visible sign of the approach of a swarming-fit for several days before the swarm actually issues.  But, as often as not, no such is given.  The hive, at least to the unexpert eye, seems in its normal condition right up to the moment when the great emigration takes place.  And then, as at a given signal, the work suddenly stops, and the bees pour out of the hive-entrance in a living stream, darkening the air for many yards round, the cloud of bees rising higher and higher, and spreading over a greater space with every moment.  The swarm may take three or four minutes to get fairly on the wing; and, from a hive, may number twenty-five or thirty thousand individuals.
 
There is seldom any fear of stings at such a time, and this extraordinary phase of bee-life may usually be studied at close quarters.  One of the most puzzling things about it is that, however large the swarm proves to be, enough workers and drones are still left behind in the old hive to carry on the work of the stock.  When the order for the sally is given, and a excitement spreads at once throughout the hive, those bees chosen to remain in the old are unmoved by the general mad spirit.  Directly the last of the trekking-party has gone off, the home-bees set and quietly to work as if nothing had happened.  With the whole garden alive with flashing wings, and with the rich deep of the swarm, the bees forming the remnant of the old colony go about their usual business in perfect unconcern, lancing straight off into the sunshine towards the clover-fields, or winging busily homeward with honey and , just as they have been doing for weeks past.  And if the hive be opened at this time, it will show nothing unusual except that no queen will be found.  There will be three or four queen-cells like hanging from the edges of the central combs; and the first queen to hatch out, and prove herself happily mated, will be allowed to destroy all the others.  For the rest, work seems to be going on in a perfectly normal way.  The nectar and pollen are being stored in the cells; the young grubs are being fed; most of the combs are fairly well covered with their busy population, consisting principally of young bees, although a fair sprinkling of mature workers and drones is everywhere visible.  In eight or ten days the new queen will be laying and the colony rapidly its former strength.
 
Meanwhile, the swarm is still in the air, every bee careering hither and with no other apparent purpose than that of allowing full to the mad excitement which has so mysteriously seized upon it.  This state will often last a consid............