442 INSECTS. 



In short, it appears that the bees when deprived of their queen, 

 are thrown into great agitation; that they wait about twenty 

 hours, apparently in hopes of her return ; but that after this in- 

 terregnum, the agitation ceases; and they set about supplying their 

 loss by beginning to construct royal cells. It is when they are in 

 this temper, and not sooner, that a stranger queen will be graci- 

 ously received : and upon her being presented to them, the royal 

 cells, in whatever state of forwardness they may happen to be, 

 are instantly abandoned, and the larves destroyed. Reaumur 

 must therefore have mistaken the result of his own experiments, 

 when he asserts, that a stranger queen is instantly well received, 

 though presented at the moment when the other is withdrawn. He 

 had seen the bees crowding around her at the entrance of the 

 hive, and laying their antennas over her ; and this he seems to have 

 taken for caressing. The structure of the hives he employed pre- 

 vented him from seeing further : had he used the leaf-hive, or one 

 of similar construction, he would have perceived that the apparent 

 caresses of the guards were only the prelude of actual impri- 

 sonment. 



It is well known, that after the season of swarming, a general 

 massacre of the drones is commenced. Several authors assert in 

 their writings, that the workers do not sting the drones to death, 

 but merely harass them till they be banished from the hive and 

 perish. M. Huber contrived a glass table, on which he placed 

 several hives, and he was thus able to see distinctly what passed in 

 the bottom of the hive, which is generally dark and concealed : 

 he witnessed a real and furious massacre of the males, the workers 

 thrusting their sting so deep into the bodies of the defenceless 

 drones, that they were obliged to turn on themselves as on a 

 pivot, before they could extricate them. The work of death com- 

 menced in all the hives much about the same time. It is not, 

 however, by a blind or indiscriminating instinct that the workers 

 are impelled thus to sacrifice the males ; for if a hive be deprived 

 of its queen, no massacre of the males take place in it, while the 

 hottest persecution rages in all the surrounding hives. In this case, 

 the males are allowed to survive the winter. Mr. Bonner had 

 observed this fact ; he supposed, however, that the workers thus 

 tolerated the drones for the sake of the additional heat they gene- 



