THE HONEY-BEE. ' 97 



to the honey cells for that purpose, she had to 

 scramble, often with great difficulty, over the crowd, 

 not an individual of which got out of her way, or 

 seemed to care whether she fed or starved. But no 

 sooner did she hecome a mother than the scene was 

 changed indeed, and all vied in testifying their affec- 

 tion and regard; one after another presented her 

 proboscis with food, and at every step of her pro- 

 gress, a circle was formed around her by her admir- 

 ing subjects. The other circumstance alluded to, 

 which varies from the experience of Huber, respects 

 the vigilance of the workers in such cases, and the 

 sound emitted by the queens. He says, that the 

 workers form no guard around the cells of artificial 

 queens, and that these last are perfectly mute ; and 

 the Naturalist makes some remarks by way of account- 

 ing for it.* The above experiment is completely in 

 contradiction to this. The cell of the younger queen 

 was most strictly guarded, and both emitted the 

 sounds alluded to, perhaps once every minute, for 

 several hours together. To these experiments we 

 have only to add farther, that, as already stated, we 

 have very frequently repeated the same operation, 

 and always with success ; and that in the summer 

 of 1832, we removed the reigning queen of the 

 same experimental hive three times successively, 

 suffering each queen to remain just long enough to 

 lay a score or two of eggs before her removal ; and 

 each time the workers laid the foundations of five or 

 six royal cells, and brought two or three Queens to 

 Huber, p. 181. : 



