THE HONEY-BEE. 63 



kept looking at her for some minutes before we re- 

 stored the captive to her alarmed defenders. It is 

 remarkable that this violence was not resented by 

 them ; though they coursed over our hands in scores, 

 while we kept hold of their mistress/ not one indivi- 

 dual used its sting. The all engrossing object was 

 the Queen. They may be handled, and roughly too, 

 with like impunity when they are swarming. Intent 

 then only on securing a habitation for themselves and 

 their sovereign, they seem incapable of entertaining 

 at the same moment two different ideas, if we may 

 use such an expression, and their natural irritability 

 is not awakened to exertion. 



There is a fact connected with the instinct of the 

 Queen in laying her eggs, which deserves particular 

 notice, and which we have not seen stated by any 

 other writer on the subject of Bees.* When she 

 has laid a cluster of eggs to the number of thirty or 

 forty, more or less according to circumstances, on 

 one side of the comb; instead of laying in all the 

 empty cells in the same quarter, she removes to the 

 other side, and lays in the cells which are directly 

 opposite to those which she has just supplied with 

 eggs, and, generally speaking, in none else. This 

 mode of proceeding is of a piece with that wise ar- 

 rangement which runs through all the operations of 

 the Bees, and is another effect of that remarkable 

 instinct by which they are guided. For as they clus- 

 ter closely in those parts of the comb which are filled 

 with brood, in order to concentrate the heat neces- 



* The writer stated this fact several years ago in the Edin- 

 ' burgh Philosophical Journal. 



