paper on the subject of raising queen bees from Ligurian 

 stocks : — 



The experiments of Huber would almost seem conclusive 

 " that the bees have the power of converting the worms of 

 the worker bee into queen bees," and subsequent experi- 

 ments have gone so far as to procure queen bees by 

 operating on worms, not chosen by the bees themselves, but 

 selected by the experimentalists or naturalists. And I can, 

 from personal, constant watchings, now for a period of a 

 quarter of a century or more, speak most positively on the 

 subject as an established fact. Still, I find, on my return 

 to England, and placed once more on the list of members of 

 your Kent Natural History Society, that there are still some 

 moot points raised in the bee-culturing world, and this 

 in the face of the evidences of such men as my lamented 

 old friend. Dr. Bevan, the author of the " Honey Bee," of 

 Hereford ; and the distinguished writer and naturalist. Sir 

 William Jardine, Bart. On this occasion, I venture to 

 g^ve a few of my own observations, not that Huber, Bevan, 

 or Jardine require any confirmation, or that my notes are 

 of sufiicient value to supply any deficiency in their 

 evidences, or refute any errors which the more recent book- 

 making bee-masters, or hive-building impostors in natural 

 history are constantly putting forth before the bee-masters 

 and the public ; but I offer them, with all due deference, in 

 the hope that this Society and especially the more 

 scientific members of it, will join those purely out of door 

 naturalists and zealous observers heartily, and test again 

 and again their experiments suggested by Schirach exactly 

 100 years ago, and set at rest any question that may arise. 

 as the more numerous the experiments and greater the 

 diversity of experimentalists, the more clearly is each 

 alleged fact established. The results be uniformly the same, 

 as Sir William Jardine has observed in his beautiful work 

 on the entomology of the honey bee, and with the same 

 feelings uppermost in my thoughts I commend to my 

 brother workers, in this most interesting field of enquiry, to 



