334 THE INSECT WORLD. 



a hive have been informed of the project which will be executed not 



before noon, or, perhaps, not for some hours after it ? There 



is a well-known story of an old grenadier, who, being comfortably 

 asleep while his comrades were pitching their tents, answered to his 

 general, M. de Turenne, when questioned on the subject, Uhat he 

 knav very well that t/ie army would not remain long in the camp they 

 were pitching' 



" All our bees, or nearly all, seemed to have foreseen the move 

 that their queen was about to make, as that old soldier had foreseen 

 the general's order to his army/'* 



In a hive which is going to '* cast," as it is called in technical 

 phraseology, there is often heard, in the evening, and even during 

 the night, a peculiar humming. All seems to be in agitation. 

 Sometimes, to hear the noise, it will be necessary to bring your ear 

 close to the hive ; you then will hear nothing but clear and sharp 

 sounds, which seem to be produced by the flapping of the wings of 

 one single bee. " Those who know better than I do the language of 

 bees," says Reaumur, " have told marvels of these sounds. They 

 pretend that it is the new queen that makes this noise ; that she is, 

 perhaps, haranguing the troops she wishes to go with her ; or that, 

 with a kind of trumpet, she animates them to undertake the great 

 adventure. Charles Butler, the author of ' Female Monarchy,' 

 attributes to this noise quite another signification. He says that it 

 seems as if the bee which aspires to become queen supplicates the 

 queen-mother, by lamentations and groans, to grant it permission to 

 lead a colony out from the hive ; that the queen does not yield 

 sometimes to these touching prayers for two days ; that when she 

 does acquiesce, she answers the suppliant in a fuller and stronger 

 voice; and that when you have heard the mother-bee grant this 

 permission, you may hope next day to have a swarm. . . Butler has 

 determined all the modulations of the chant of the suppliant bee, the 

 different keys to which they are set, as also those of the chants of the 

 queen-mother. He pretends that it is not allowed to those who wish 

 to raise themselves to a superior rank to imitate the chants of the 

 sovereign; woe betide the young female if she should dare to do so ! 

 it would only be in a spirit of revolt, and she would be immediately 

 punished by the loss of her head. The old-established queen does 

 more than that : at the same moment she condemns to death those 

 bees which had been seduced."t The true cause of this unusual 



* " Memoires pour servir a ITIistoire des Insectes," tome v., p. 6ii. 

 + Ibid., tome v., pp. 6i6, 617. 



