A Large Family | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 42.

A Large Family.

"The yellow Italian bees are gentler than the brown wild bees; and it is said that the Italian bee has a longer proboscis, and so can get honey from the red clover, which is so abundant hereabout. I thought they were better; for, when I was a very poor man, I bought an Italian queen bee in the big city of New York, and paid twenty dollars for her, and I have never yet repented of my extravagance. I have now sixty-nine hives of pure Italian bees, and they are all the descendants of my pretty queen. Allowing forty thousand bees to a swarm, which is a moderate number, it is not a bad showing for her majesty. Let me see, forty thousand by sixty-nine makes—well, at least two and a half millions of living descendants, besides dozens of queens I have given away, with all their descendants; these, added to the multitudes that have lived and died in the meantime, must make, altogether, not far from two hundred millions in twelve years."—St. Nicholas.