aud by the prevention of laying, that the Ufe of the queen could be prolonged 

 for four years, as had been done by Mr. Desbrough. Major Muun then 

 proceeded to question the commonly received opinion as to the mode in which 

 the queen bee is reared, and contended that the notion of the larvae being fed on 

 the so-called royal jelly, or in fact that any of the larvae were fed, was erroneous ; 

 the larv£E, he said, have no anal opening until the last day of their larval 

 life, and no main canal extending further than the silk-vessels : the larvae, in 

 fact, are lubricated, not fed ; they grow by absorption, and in the case of the 

 queen the rate of absorption is quickened by a layer of honey or jelly placed 

 behind the cell in which the larva is, forming a hot-bed in the rear of the 

 larva and enabling it to absorb at both ends or on all sides at once : with a 

 view to the formation of this hot-bed, queen-eggs were invariably laid in 

 unfinished cells. The worker or drone larvae were not subject to this forcing 

 process ; and whenever a queen was raised from worker brood, without the aid 

 of the hot-bed, a dwarf queen was the invariable result.* 



Paper read. 



The following paper was read : — " The Genera of Coleoptera studied 

 chronologically " (Part 2, from 1802 to 1891) ; by Mr. G. R. Crotch. 



* Since the Meeting, the following notes have been furnished by Major 

 Munn : — 



" At a recent Meeting at Niiremberg, the bee-masters talked of the life of 

 the queen-bee as extending to four and five years, and I am not sure that some 

 works on bee-management have not given even seven years. My own observa- 

 tions confirm the Report made to this Society on the duration of life in the 

 queen, drone, and worker of the honey-bee, by Mr. J. G. Desbrough, who has 

 given some excellent calculations and facts ; and the following results have been 

 arrived at since the introduction into this country of the Ligurian bee. In 

 October, having got together two swarms of the bi'own bee, the queen was 

 removed, and a Ligurian yellow queen was introduced ; she remained, and 

 raised the stock in May, when every bee was a true Ligurian. Again, this 

 Ligurian stock being strengthened in October with other Ligurian workers, a 

 brown queen was introduced fi'om another apiary ; in May, every bee was found 

 to be of the true home-bred brown form. This settled the question of the age 

 of the workers, taking the winter half of the bee-season. Having raised and 

 saved a hive filled with drones, and allowing them to exist in the stock by 

 destroying the impregnated queen and by keeping the bees employed in 

 attempting to raise queens, October found the drones hatched and located in 

 the hive ; but to prevent their slaughter, the queen was removed, when the 

 drones hvcd, aud perished almost the last in the stock in the month of January. 



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