366 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



When our young prisoners are ready to emerge, they do not, like the 

 ants, require the assistance of the workers, but themselves eat through the 

 cocoon and the cell that incloses it. By a wise provision, which prevents 

 the injury or destruction of a cell, they generally make their way through 

 the cover or lid with which the workers had shut it up ; though sometimes, 

 but not often, a female will break through the side of her prison. 



Having thus shown you our little chemists in their preparatory states, 

 and carried you from the egg to the cocoon, both of which may be deemed 

 a kind of cradle, in which they are nursed to fit them for two very different 

 conditions of existence, I must now introduce you to a scene more inte- 

 resting and diversified, in which all their wonderful instincts are displayed 

 in full action, and we see them exceed some of the most vaunted products 

 of human wisdom, art, and skill. 



The queen-mother here demands our first attention, as the personage 

 upon whom, when established in her regal dignity, the welfare and happi- 

 ness of the apiarian community altogether depend. I shall begin my his- 

 tory with the events that befall her on her quitting the royal cradle, and 

 appearing in the perfect state. And here you will find that the first mo- 

 ments of her life, prior to her election to lead a swarm or fill a vacant 

 throne, are moments of the greatest uneasiness and vexation, if not of ex- 

 treme peril and vindictive and mortal warfare. The Homeric maxim, that 

 " the government of many is not good 1 ," is fully adopted and rigorously 

 adhered to in these societies. The jealous Semiramis of the hive will 

 bear no rival near her throne. There are usually not less than sixteen, 

 and sometimes not less than twenty, royal cells in the same nest ; you 

 may therefore conceive what a sacrifice is made when one only is suffered 

 to live and to reign. But here a distinction obtains which should not be 

 overlooked : in some instances a single queen only is wanted to govern 

 her native hive ; in others several are necessary to lead the swarms. In 

 the first case, inevitable death is the lot of all but one ; in the other, as 

 many as are wanted are preserved from destruction by the precautions 

 taken on that occasion, under the direction of an all-wise Providence, by 

 the workers. I shall enlarge a little on each of these cases. In the for- 

 micary, as we have seen, rival queens live together very harmoniously 

 without molesting each other ; but there is that instinctive jealousy in a 

 quegn-bee, that no sooner does she discover the existence of another in 

 the hive than she is put into a state of the most extreme agitation, and is 

 not easy until she has attacked and destroyed her. 



Naturalists had observed that when there were two queens in the same 

 hive, one of them soon perished ; but some supposed (this was the opinion 

 of Schirach and Riem) that the workers destroyed the supernumeraries. 

 Reaumur, however, conjectured that these queens attacked each other ; 

 and his conjecture has been since confirmed by the actual observation of 

 other naturalists. Blassiere, the translator of Schirach, tells us, as what 

 he had himself witnessed, that the strongest queen kills her rival with her 

 sting ; and the same is asserted by Huber, whose opportunities of observa- 

 tion were greater than those of any of his precursors. 2 



The queen that is first liberated from her confinement, and has assumed 



1 Oux oiyetBv) v (roXuzoigviri, us zouaves ttrru. 



2 Schirach, 209. note *. Huber, i. 170. 



