BEE* 429 



lines, or sixteen English, that is, an inch and one-third : the boxes 

 are placed parallel to each other, and connected together by hinges. 

 Arailing himself of a known instinct in the bees, which leads them 

 to complete any piece of a comb in the direction in which they 

 find it begun, unless they meet with some insurmountable obsta- 

 cles ; he placed pieces of comb in each box, in such a position as 

 to induce them to build perpendicular to the horizon. The lateral 

 surface of the combs were thus only three or four lines distant from, 

 the glass panes ; and by opening the different divisions of the hive 

 successively, both surfaces of every comb were, at pleasure, brought 

 fully into view. M. Huber did not experience any difficulty in in- 

 troducing swarms into these leaf-hives : and he found, that after 

 the lapse of about three days, when the colony was fairly estab. 

 Iished, the bees submitted patiently to his daily inspections. Their 

 tranquility he ascribes, with some probability, to the surprise, and 

 perhaps fear, produced by the sudden admission of the light ; for 

 he observed that they were always less tractable after sunset. Both 

 the queen-bee and the drones being considerably larger than the 

 working bees, by adapting glass tubes exactly to the size of the 

 workers, both queens and drones may be effectually excluded or 

 effectually kept prisoners, as the nature of the experiments may 

 require. 



M. Huber commences his inquiry with examining into the na- 

 ture of the impregnation of the queen bee, a subject hitherto in- 

 volved in the most profound obscurity. The drones are evidently 

 males ; but the most careful observation had never been able to 

 detect any thing like sexual intercourse between them and the 

 o^ueen bee. Schirach (a German naturalist, well known for his 

 discoveries concerning bees) boldly denied that such intercourse 

 was necessary to her impregnation ; and in this he is stoutly sup- 

 ported by our north-countryman Bonner. Swammerdam, again, 

 remarking that the drones, at certain seasons, when collected in 

 clusters, exhaled a strong odour, broached an opinion that this 

 odour, proceeding from whole clusters of drones, was a kind of 

 aurora seminalis, which produced fecundation by penetrating the 

 body of the female. There are generally from 1500 to 2000 males 

 in a hive, while there are only two or three queens to be impreg- 

 nated in a season ; and Swammerdam seems to have found, in his 

 hypothesis, an easy explanation of this enormous disproportion in 



