PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 401 



The queen-mother liere demands our first attention, as the personage 

 upon whom, when estabhshed in her regal dignity, the welfare and happi- 

 ness of the apiarian community altogether depend. I shall begin my 

 history with the events that befal her on her quitting the royal cradle, and 

 appearing in the perfect state. And here you will find that the first 

 moments of her life, prior to her election to lead a swarm or fill a vacant 

 throne, are moments of the greatest uneasiness and vexation, if not of 

 extreme peril and vindictive and mortal warfare. The Homeric maxim, 

 that " the government of many is not good^," is fully adopted and rigor- 

 ously adhered to in these societies. The jealous Semiramis of the hive 

 will bear no rival near her throne. There are usually not less than six- 

 teen, and sometimes not less than twenty, royal cells in the same nest ; 

 you may therefore conceive what a sacrifice is made when one only is 

 suffered to live and to reign. But here a distinction obtains which should 

 not be overlooked : in some instances a single queen only is wanted to 

 govern her native hive ; in others several are necessary to lead the swarms. 

 In the first case, inevitable death is the lot of all but one ; in the other, as 

 many as are wanted are preserved from destruction by the precautions 

 taken on that occasion, under the direction of an all-wise Providence, by 

 the workers. I shall enlarge a little on each of these cases. In the 

 formicary, as we have seen, rival queens live together very harmoniously 

 without molesting each other ; but there is that instinctive jealousy in a 

 queen bee, that no sooner does she discover the existence of another in 

 the hive than she is put into a state of the most extreme agitation, and is 

 not easy until she has attacked and destroyed her. 



Naturalists had observed that when there were two queens in the same 

 hive, one of them soon perished ; but some supposed (this was the opinion 

 of Schirach and Riem) that the workers destroyed the supernumeraries. 

 Reaumur, however, conjectured that these queens attacked each other ; 

 and his conjecture has been since confirmed by the actual observation of 

 other naturalists. Blassiere, the translator of Schirach, tells us, as what 

 he had himself witnessed, that the strongest queen kills her rival with her 

 sting ; and the same is asserted by Huber, whose opportunities of observa- 

 tion were greater than those of any of his precursors.^ 



The queen that is first liberated from her confinement, and has assumed 

 the perfect or imago state (it is to be supposed that the author is here 

 speaking of a hive which has lost the old queen), soon after this event 

 goes to visit the royal cells that are still inhabited. She darts with fury 

 upon the first with which she meets ; by means of her jaws she gnaws a 

 hole large enough to introduce the end of her abdomen, and with her 

 sting, before the included female is in a condition to defend herself or 

 resist her attack, she gives her a mortal wound. The workers, who remain 

 passive spectators of this assassination, after she quits the victim of her 

 jealousy, enlarge the breach that she has made, and drag forth the carcass 

 of a queen just emerged from the thin membrane that envelops the pupa. 

 If the object of her attack be still in the pupa state, she is stimulated by 

 a less violent degree of rage, and contents herself with making a breach 

 in the cell : when this happens, the death of the inclosed insect is equally 



' OvK ayadij f/ iro\vKotpnvtri, cU KOtpavof earu. 



« Schjrach, 209. note *. Huber, i. 170. 



34* 



