see. 445 



chased, as often as she happens to approach the other royal cells 

 in the hire. The purpose of nature here seems to be, that she 

 should be impelled to go off with a swarm as soon as possible. A 

 curious fact was observed on these occasions ; when the queen 

 found herself much harrassed, she had only to utter a peculiar 

 noise, (the commanding voice, we may presume, of sovereignty) 

 and all the bees were instantaneously constrained to submission 

 and obedience. This is, indeed, one of the most marked instances 

 in which the queen exerts her sovereign power. It seems entirely 

 to have escaped the notice of Mr. Bonner, who declares that he 

 never could observe in the queen any thing like an exertion of 

 sovereignty. Yet the language of hive bees in general has been 

 observed and noticed by Mr. Kirby, and many earlier writers. 



The conclusions at which M. Ruber arrives on the subject of 

 swarms are the following. 



1st. " A swarm is always led off by a single queen, either the 

 sovereign of the parent hive, or one recently brought into exist- 

 ence. If at the return of spring, we examine a hive well peopled, 

 and governed by a fertile queen, we shall see her lay a prodigious 

 number of male eggs in the course of May, and the workers will 

 choose that moment for constructing several royal cells." This 

 laying of male e^ T gs in May, M. Huber calls the great laying ; and 

 he remarks, that no queen ever has a great laying till she be eleven 

 months old. It is only after finishing this laying, that she is able to 

 undertake the journey implied in leading a swarm; for previously to 

 this " latum tralrit alvum," which unfits her for flying. There 

 appears to be a secret relation between the production of the male 

 eggs and the construction of royal cells. The great laying com- 

 monly lasts thirty days : and regularly on the twentieth or twenty- 

 first several royal cells are founded. 



2dly, M When the larves hatched from the eggs laid by the 

 queen in the royal cells are ready to transform to nymphs, this 

 queen leaves the hive, conducting a swarm along with her 5 and 

 the first swarm that proceeds from the hive is uniformly conducted 

 by the old queen." M. Huber remarks, that it was necessary that 

 instinct should impel the old queen to lead forth the first swarm; 

 for that she being the strongest, would never have failed to 

 have overthrown the younger competitors for the throne. 

 An old queen, as has already been said, never quits a hive at the 



