SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF FRANCIS HUBEB. 493 



"When the first great drone-laying begins, the bees construct a 

 number of royal cells, sometimes as many as twenty-seven. In these 

 the queen deposits eggs on successive days, so that, when she leads 

 off the new swarm, another queen may be ready to take her place; 

 and also, that if the swarm be vigorous enough to throw off several 

 colonies, each may be provided with a leader. During this season 

 the ordinary instincts of the workers seem reversed ; they hinder the 

 queen, if she seems so disposed, from destroying the royal pupce con- 

 tained in the cells. 



A common bee, when it reaches maturity, makes its way, without 

 help, out of the cell, and it is for some time too weak to fly. A queen, 

 however, is guarded by the bees ; she is closely watched, and constant- 

 ly fed through a small aperture in the covering of her cell, till she has 

 attained sufficient strength to fly. The presence of a developed and 

 imprisoned queen is generally made patent by a peculiar note which 

 she utters, called piping. Above the busy hum of the hive this sound 

 may be distinguished ; it seems to be the expression of her impa- 

 tience at her imprisonment, and is the usual precursor of swarming. 



Another note, peculiar to the queen, Huber mentions. This he 

 calls the vox regalis, and he states that its utterance invariably struck 

 the bees motionless. It has not been observed by modern apiarians, 

 and yet the best among them do not deny the fact, because of his 

 usual exactness and caution. 



Huber describes the process of swarming in minute detail. Toward 

 the close of the drone-laying season, when numbers of the drones, and 

 some of the queens, have nearly attained maturity, he observed the 

 old queen rapidly passing over the combs. She created an agitation 

 wherever she went, which did not subside after her departure, but 

 communicated itself to all the bees in the vicinity. Finally, the whole 

 swarm appeared to be in a violent state of excitement, and large num- 

 bers issued from the hive with the queen at their head. During the 

 agitation, which precedes swarming, the thermometer rises from be- 

 tween 90 and 91 to 104. " This heat is intolerable to bees," says 

 Huber ; " when exposed to it, they rush impetuously to the outlets of 

 the hive, and depart." Swarming is occasioned by excessive heat, 

 quite as much as by an overstocked hive. The initial cause of the 

 queen's agitation is not known, but it always communicates itself to 

 the whole swarm, whatever its cause may be. 



Queens raised from the larvae of workers had been called mute, be- 

 cause the piping had not been observed in them ; but Huber discov- 

 ered that it was only because they are not detained in captivity. He 

 held one in confinement, and found her piping quite as vehement as 

 that of her sisters, reared from the beginning in royal quarters. 



The instinct of worker-bees, which is usually so unerring, some- 

 times fails them in the most unaccountable way. Though they detect 

 drone-eggs in worker-cells, and worker-eggs in drone-cells, they seem 



