• ORDER VI. VEIN-^\1NGED INSECTS. 263 - 



single cell, and in three weeks, without having accomplished 

 any work, the greater part of them flew away, while the one 

 thousand which remained were found dead in the hive the 

 next morning. Tliis experiment was repeated several times, 

 but always with the same unhappy result. 



From these and such like experiments we are convinced 

 that they do not work if their number is not sufficiently 

 large, or if they have no queen, and therefore that the ob- 

 ject of their labor is to rear and provide for a numerous 

 progeny. If in the spring we observe bees returning from 

 the meadows and gardens with empty fossse, and if we as- 

 certain that no new combs have been made since winter, Ave 

 may be certain that the queen is dead. Every day less and 

 less bees return to such a hive, and by the month of June 

 scarcely one thousand can be found in the hive. They per- 

 ish, or they try to smuggle themselves into another hive, 

 where they are generally killed. 



In order to prove that the bees always follow the queen, 

 Svvammerdam fastened a hair on her foot, and tied it to the 

 top of a pole, which he stuck in the ground in his garden. 

 The whole swarm immediately followed, and surrounded the 

 queen on all sides. In this manner he was able to carry 

 the whole swarm any where he pleased. Labet relates that 

 he found, in his travels through Western Africa, a man who 

 called himself the Lord of the Bees, because they constantly 

 followed him, flying about him wherever he went, alighting 

 on his cap, flice, shoulders, and hands, without stinging him. 

 The people thought that he had rubbed himself with some 

 plant or substance that prevented their stinging him ; but 

 the secret of all these manoeuvres probably consisted in his 

 carrying a queen concealed in his cap or elsewhere. 



It is not their admiration for the queen's beauty or es- 

 teem for her rank that makes the bees follow her and min- 

 ister unto her wants, but rather their attachment to the in- 

 dividual which produces eggs, and from whom they expect 



