492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ber was the first to observe in its details. It was seen through a glass 

 table, upon which a hive, deprived of its bottom-board, was placed. 

 He also ascertained that the massacre never takes place unless the 

 swarm possesses a fertile queen, and the swarming-season is over. 



By aid of the microscope, Huber proved that the queen-bee is 

 truly oviparous that her eggs are true eggs. He saw the worm 

 grow to maturity within the transparent walls of the egg, rend the 

 pellicle, and emerge. The idea that workers brood the eggs he also 

 dispelled, by repeated observation of the fact that the eggs hatch 

 equally well when removed from the care of the bees, and that the 

 workers frequently enter empty cells and remain quietly there, evi- 

 dently taking repose. 



His observations upon the spinning of the cocoon were made 

 through the walls of blown-glass cells, into which the egg was re- 

 moved. The drones and common bees spin complete cocoons ; the 

 royal larva, on the contrary, spins an imperfect one, enveloping the 

 head and thorax, but reaching only to the second ring of the abdomen. 

 This is evidently the result, not of any peculiar instinct, but of the 

 conformation of the cell, for the royal cocoon is complete if it be spun 

 in a common cell. In ordinary cases, if the royal cocoon were com- 

 plete, it would be impossible for a queen to destroy her rivals in the 

 state of pupa. 



By repeated experiment, he showed that the size of a cell has no 

 modifying effect upon the development of a bee, except by retarding 

 its growth, if it be too small: a common bee is the same size, whether 

 reared in drone or worker cells. In determining this point, many in- 

 teresting facts in regard to the instinct of queens and workers were 

 ascertained. A fertile queen refused to lay worker-eggs in drone- 

 cells, though evidently oppressed with them : when, however, he in- 

 troduced w r orker-cells, artificially supplied with a drone-brood, the bees 

 emptied the cells, and the queen laid in them, jive or six eggs in each. 

 With his usual judicial fairness, Huber remarks upon this inconsist- 

 ency in the instinct of queens. They refuse to lay drone-eggs in 

 worker-cells, and yet here is a queen which deposits five or six eggs 

 in a single cell ; the drone-egg in the worker-cell would produce a 

 small though perfect drone; the five or six worker-eggs in the same 

 cell, if they all remained there, would produce nothing. 



Huber concludes, from a number of experiments made in this direc- 

 tion, that, though the queen knows what kind of egg she is about to 

 lay, and so deposits it always in the proper cell, yet she does not de- 

 termine the sex of the egg, as is believed by many of the most distin- 

 guished modern apiarians. He also found that it is impossible to 

 compel bees to rear a worker in a common cell, if it has been supplied 

 with royal jelly. If the colony be queenless, they enlarge the cell into 

 a royal cell ; and, if they already possess a sovereign, they destroy the 

 worm and devour the royal jelly. 



