124 PEIIFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



brood, consists of one female or queen ; several hun- 

 dreds of males or drones; and many thousand work- 

 ers ; of the persons of each of which, following; the ex- 

 ample of many of my predecessors in this department, 

 I shall now attempt to give jou a description, that you 

 may know to distinguish them as well by the differences 

 of their form, as by their offices and functions. 



The female, or queen, first demands our attention. 

 Two sorts of females have been observed amongst the 

 bees, a large one and a small. Mr. Needham was the 

 first that observed the latter ; and their existence, 

 M. P. Huber tells us, has been confirmed by several 

 observations of his father. They are bred in cells as 

 large as those of the common queens, from which they 

 differ only in size. Though they have ovaries, they 

 have never been observed to lay eggs*. Having never 

 seen one of these, for they are of very rare occurrence, 

 iny description must be confined to the common female, 

 the genuine monarch of the hive. 



The bod^ of the female bee is considerably longer 

 than that of either the drone or the worker. The pre- 

 vailing colour in all three is the same, black or black- 

 brown ; but with respect to the female this does not ap- 

 pear to be invariably the case ; for — not to insist upon 

 Virgil's royal bees glittering with ruddy or golden 

 spots and scales, Avhere allowance must be made for. 

 poetic license — Reaumur affirms, after describing some 

 differences of colour in different individuals of this sex, 



* Bonnet, x. P. Huber in Linn. Trans, vi. 283. Reaumur (v. 373) 

 observes that some queens are much larger than others ; but he attributes 

 this difference of their size to the state of the eggs in their body. 



