BATTLE OF QUEENS. 



123. Nature has ordained that in each hive there shall be one, 

 and but one queen, and when by any concurrence of circumstances 

 a second appears, one or the other is doomed to destruction. But it 

 is not permitted to the common class of the people to do execution 

 on a royal personage, since in that case it might not be possible to 

 secure unanimity as to the particular queen who is to be preserved, 

 so that different assemblages of the people might at the same time 

 assail different queens, and so leave the hive without a sovereign. 

 It was, therefore, necessary, as Huber argues, that the extermina- 

 tion of the superfluous queens should be left to the queens them- 

 selves, and that they should in their combats be filled with an 

 instinctive horror of mutual destruction. 



Some minutes after the two queens above mentioned had 

 separated and retired from each other, and when their fears had 

 time to subside, they again prepared to approach each other. 

 They engaged once more in the same position, involving the 

 danger of mutual destruction, and as before, once again separated 

 and mutually fled each other. 



124. During all this time the greatest agitation prevailed among 

 the population who assisted at the scene, more especially when the 

 two combatants separated. On two different occasions the workers 

 interfered to prevent them from flying from one another. They 

 arrested them in their flight, seizing them by the legs and detain- 

 ing them prisoners for more than a minute. In fine, in a last 

 attack, one of the queens, more active and furious than the other, 

 taking her rival unawares, laid hold of her with her mandibles 

 at the insertion of the wing, 'and then mounting on her back, 

 and bringing the posterior extremity of her abdomen to the 

 junction of one of the abdominal segments of her adversary, 

 stabbed her mortally with her sting. She then let go the wing 

 which she had previously held and withdrew her sting. 



The vanquished queen fell, dragged her body slowly along for 

 a certain distance, and soon after expired. 



125. Having thus ascertained the conduct of virgin queens under 

 the circumstances here described, Huber made arrangements for 

 observing the conduct of queens who were in a condition to pro- 

 duce eggs. For this purpose he placed a piece of comb on which 

 three royal cells had been constructed in a hive with a laying 

 queen. The moment they caught her eye she fell upon them, 

 opened them at their bases, and surrendered them to the 

 attendant workers, who lost no time in dragging out the royal 

 nymphs, greedily devouring the store of food which re niained in 

 the cells, and sucking whatever was in the carcases. Having 

 accomplished this they proceeded to demolish the cells. 



It was now resolved to ascertain what would be the behaviour of 



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