Good evening and thank you for joining me for another boring books for bedtime.

I hope tonight selection provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep.

So find a comfortable spot.

Adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath in. Let it out out slowly and off we go.

This evening, let's continue our exploration of the fascinating world of the bee,

with more from the Hive and the Honeybee, a beekeeper's manual by Reverend L. L. L. Langstrath, first published in 1853 by Hopkins

Bridgman and Company, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Let's pick up right where we left off in the middle of Chapter 3 and the description of the

different kinds of bee in the hive.

Let's begin.

The extraordinary fertility of the Queen Bee

has already been noticed.

The process of laying has been well described by the Reverend W Dunbar, a Scotch abarian.

Quote, when the Queen is about to lay, she puts her head into a cell,

and remains in that position for a second or two to ascertain its fitness for the deposit which she is about to make.

She then withdraws her head and curving her body downwards, inserts the lower part of it into the cell.

In a few seconds she turns half round upon herself and withdraws, leaving an egg behind her.

When she lays a considerable number, she does it equally on each side of the comb, those on the one side, being as exactly opposite

to those on the other as the relative position of the cells will admit. The effect of this is to produce the utmost possible

concentration and economy of heat for developing the various changes of the brood."

End quote.

Here, as at every step in the economy of the bee, our minds are filled with admiration as we witness the perfect adaptation of means to ends.

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