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On the Queen Bee, 

 With Especial Reference to the Fertilization of her Eggs. 



By John Hunter. 

 {Read Oct. 25th, 1878.) 



The life history, functions, and attributes of the Hive Bee, have 

 for more than 2,000 years engaged the attention of Naturalists and 

 other men of science. Apiarian students have numbered in their 

 ranks men whose pre-eminent learning have left their names as land- 

 marks to posterity, and who will never be forgotten while history 

 exists. Among the ancient philosophers who have studied and 

 written upon the Bee, I may mention Virgil, who devoted the whole 

 of his Fourth Georgic to the subject ; Cicero, Pliny, Aristomachus, 

 Philiscus, Columella and Celsus ; and within the present century we 

 have the great naturalist, Swammerdam, the mathematician Maraldi, 

 Reaumur, the inventor of the thermometer which bears his name, my 

 illustrious namesake, John Hunter, the anatomist, and Huber, of 

 Genoa, whose total blindness did not prevent his giving to the world 

 many facts in the bee's life history which were before unexpected. 

 Without approaching nearer to our own time, the above array of 

 brilliant names as examples will sufficiently excuse any amount of 

 attention we lesser lights may give to an insect so small, but yet of 

 great and increasing service to mankind. 



When so many learned men have been before us, it may be assumed 

 that the subject is well worn, but the fact is, that, from the imperfect 

 means of observation enjoyed until lately, mainly by the miscon- 

 struction of hives, facts have been so mixed up with surmises and 

 wrong deductions drawn, that it became a difficult task to separate 

 the true from the false. A colony of bees consists of workers 

 which may number 50,000 or more, in summer a few hundred drones, 

 and one queen, who is the only individual in all this vast assembly 

 capable of propagating the species. At the present time, the month 

 of October, we may safely assume that under normal circumstances 

 the queen in any hive is the mother of every other bee there. The 



