PAIRING Off BEES. 261 



" Next day, having renewed our former position, we 

 witnessed fresh scenes of carnage. During three hours 

 the workers slaughtered the males with the utmost 

 fury. On the preceding evening they had massacred 

 all which belonged to their own hive, but now they 

 attacked those which had been driven from the 

 neighbouring hives, and had taken refuge among 

 them. We likewise saw them tear some remaining 

 male pupae from the cells, and having first greedily 

 sucked all the fluid from their bodies, they carried 

 them off. The following day not a single male could 

 be discovered in the hives*." 



This appears to be so very unnatural a proceeding, 

 that but for the concurring testimony of observers of 

 the highest authority, we should be almost disposed 

 to reject it as chimerical ; and yet it is not, perhaps, 

 subjecting them to a more cruel fate than awaits 

 most other insects, which all perish of hunger or 

 disease, within a few days after pairing. That it is 

 not the consequence of a blind indiscriminating 

 instinct, we may infer from the remarkable circum- 

 stance that no massacre of the males occurs when a 

 hive is deprived of its queen. Bonnet, who first 

 remarked this, conjectured that the males were pre- 

 served for the sake of the additional heat they would 

 produce during the winter; but Huber solves the 

 question with more plausibility, by the supposition 

 that they are reserved for pairing with a new queen. 

 For a similar reason, the males are preserved in 

 those hives where the queens are only capable of 

 laying the eggs of males, as they always do when 

 pairing has been retarded beyond the twenty-first 

 day of their age. 



* Huber on Bees, page 112. 



