OF NATURAL HISTORY. 349 



the neceflity of quitting their labour in order to go in queft 

 of food. In bad weather, the bees feed upon the honey 

 laid up in open cells ; but they never touch thefe refervoirs 

 when their companions are enabled to fupply them with 

 frelh honey from the fields. But the mouths of thofe cells 

 which are deftined for preferving honey during winter, they 

 •always cover with a lid or thin plate of wax. 



Though not fl:ri6i:ly connected with the prefent fubjecH:, 

 we cannot refrain from giving fome account of the ingenious 

 Mr. Debraw's difcoveries concerning the fex of bees, and the 

 manner in which their fpecies is multiplied*. It was almoft 

 univerfally believed, both by ancients and moderns, that bees, 

 like other animals, propagated by an adlual intercourfe of the 

 male and female, though it never could be perceived by the 

 moft attentive obfervers. Pliny remarks, that apium coitus 

 "oifns ejl jiunqtiam ; and even the indefatigable Reaumur, not- 

 wich {landing the many minute refearches and experiments 

 he made concerning every part of the oeconomy of bees, and 

 though he reprefents the mother, or queen-bee, as a perfedl 

 Meffalina, could never detecl an a61:ual intercourfe. From 

 this lingular circumftance, Maraldi, in his obfervations upon 

 beesf , coiije(Stared that the eggs of bees, like thofe of fifhes, 

 were impregnated after they were depolited in the cells by 

 the mother. He was farther confirmed in this opinion, by 

 uniformly obferving that a whitlfli liquid fubftance furround- 

 ed each egg which turned out to be fertile •, but that thofe 

 eggs round which no fuch fubftance was to be found were al- 

 ways barren. The working bees, or thofe which colledt from 

 flowers the materials of wax, have generally been confidered 

 as belonging to neither fex. But Mr. Schirach, a German 

 NaturalifV, in his Hijlory of the Qiteen of the BeeSy maintains, 

 that all the common bees are females in a difguifed or barren 



♦ See Philofophical Tranfacflions, ann. 1777, Part I. page 15. 

 f Hift, de I'Acad. de Scien, ann, 1 7 1 z. 

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