ISO PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 



objects which, had its ovaries been developed, it would 

 have hated and pursued with the most vindictive fury 

 till it had destroyed them ! Further, that these factitious 

 queens (I mean those that the bees elect from amongst 

 worker brood, and educate to supply the place of a lost 

 one in the manner just described) shall differ remarkably 

 from the natural queens, (or those that have been wholly 

 educated in a royal cellf) in being altogether mute a . 

 All this, you will think at first sight, so improbable, and 

 next to impossible, that you will require the strongest 

 and most irrefragable evidence before you will believe it. 

 In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the con- 

 trary, this astonishing and seemingly incredible fact rests 

 upon strong foundations, and is established by experi- 

 ments made at different times, by different persons of the 

 highest credit, in different parts of Europe. The first 

 who brought it before the public (as I lately observed) 

 was M. Schirach, secretary of an Apiarian Society esta- 

 blished at Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia. He ob- 

 served, that bees when shut up with a portion of comb, 

 containing only worker brood, would soon erect royal 

 cells, and thus obtain queens : the experiment was fre- 

 quently repeated, and the result was almost uniformly 

 the same. In one instance he tried it with a single cell, 

 and it succeeded 5 . This curious fact was communicated 

 to the celebrated Bonnet, who, though he hesitated long 

 before he admitted it, was at length fully convinced. M. 

 Wilhelmi (Schirach's brother-in-law), though at first he 

 accounted for the fact upon other principles, and object- 

 ed strongly to the doctrine in question, induced by the 

 powerful evidence in favour of it, at last gave up his 

 a Huber, i. 292, * Bonnet, x. 



