THE BEE. 



her to it, for in no human monarchy are the hopes of succession so- 

 anxiously cherished as in the Empire of the Hive. 



14. It must not he imagined, that hecause a lady is thus 

 domesticated alone with so many hundred lovers, there is any 

 the least degree of laxity in the morals of the society ; on the con- 

 trary, although she is absolutely uncontrolled, and is courted 

 hy so many hundreds, her choice is strictly limited to one. A fine 

 warm sunny day is selected for the nuptials, which are celebrated 

 in the air. On the auspicious occasion, her majesty issuing from 

 the hive followed hy the^nultitude of her suitors, rises in the air, 

 where she is encircled hy the flight of the candidates for her 

 favour. Here she makes her selection, but, alas ! the felicity is 

 brief, for the object of her choice never outlives the wedding-day. 

 She is, however, not the less faithful to him, and never contracts 

 a second marriage. 



15. Though her majesty is thus left a widowed bride-, in 

 two days after the celebration of her nuptials and the loss of 

 her lord, she commences to lay eggs from which a posthumous 

 progeny of that lord, countless in number, are destined to issue. 

 Of the hundreds of rejected suitors, a limited number emigrate 

 with the successive swarms, which from time to time leave the 

 overpeopled hive. Those which remain, being no longer useful to 

 the community, become objects of general aversion, and are finally 

 exterminated by a general massacre, as will presently be more 

 fully explained. 



16. During six or eight weeks the queen constantly lays eggs,, 

 from which working bees only are destined to issue. Chambers 

 have been previously prepared for these, suitable to the future 

 young ones, in form, size, and position, by the workers. In each 

 of those cells the queen deposits a single egg. 



At a later period her majesty begins to lay another kind of egg, 

 from which males will issue. For these also special chambers 

 have been provided by the careful workers, of suitable dimen- 

 sions, being somewhat more roomy than those prepared for 

 worker-eggs. The number of these male eggs and of the 

 cells for their reception is incomparably less than those of the 

 workers ; less, in short, in the proportion in which the drone 

 class is less numerous than that of the workers in the population 

 of the hive. 



17. In fine, the queen, sensible of her mortality, and more- 

 over of the approaching state of superabundant population in the 

 hive, lays a certain small number of royal eggs, from which as 

 many princesses issue, who are severally destined to be candidates 

 for the thrones of the colonies which are to emigrate, or to succeed 

 to the throne of the hive itself, should the queen-mother, as often. 



8 



