PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 153 



her honey ; they Hck her witli their proboscis, and vvliere- 

 ever she goes she has a court to attend upon her^. It 

 may here be observed, that the stimulant which excites 

 the bees to these acts of homage is the pregnant state of 

 their queen, and her fitness to maintain the population 

 of the hive; all they do being with a view to the public 

 good : for while she remains a virgin she is treated with 

 the utmost indifference, which is exchanged, as soon as 

 impregnation has taken place, for the above marks of 

 attachment''. 



The instinct of the bees, however, does not always 

 enable them to distinguish a partially fertile queen from 

 one that is universally so. What I mean is this — A 

 queen, whose impregnation is retarded beyond the 

 twenty- eighth day of her whole existence, lays only male 

 eggs, which are of no use whatever to the community, 

 unless they are at the same time provided with a suffi- 

 cient supply of workers. Yet even a queen of this de- 

 scription, and sometimes one that is entirely sterile, is 

 treated by them with the same respect and homage as a 

 fertile one. This seems to evince an amiable feeling in 

 these creatures, attachment to the person as well as to 

 the functions of the sovereign ; which is further manifest- 

 ed by their unwillingness at first to receive a new sove- 

 reign upon the loss or death of their old one. Nay, this 

 respect is sometimes shown to the carcase of a defunct 

 queen, which Huber assures us he has seen bees treat 

 with the same attention that they had shown her when 

 alive ; for a long time preferring her inanimate corpse 



" Reaum, v. Pref. xv. "^ Huber, i. 26!). 



