GENERATION QUEEN. 291 



armed with a crooked sting, which she seldom or 

 never uses, which may be a provident care of nature, 

 perhaps, for the protection of a personage of so great 

 importance, from the fatality consequent upon that 

 act. 



The GENERATION of the bee and larger insects, 

 contrary to that of the common fly, appears to be 

 after the rule of fishes. According to the prevailing 

 opinion, there is no sexual congress among bees, 

 nor is the possibility conceivable, for obvious reasons. 

 The QUEEN lays the eggs, which are afterwards fecun- 

 dated by the drones. Her body contains an ovarium 

 or egg-bag, of which certain insecto-anatomists have 

 actually or fancifully discovered two, terminating in 

 a common channel, which two are filled during the 

 breeding season. Her fruitfulness is almost beyond 

 conception, and she continues to deposit eggs, as long 

 as a cell remains vacant for them. The title of queen 

 is a mere fiction ; she would be with far more pro- 

 priety styled mother of the bees, as she really is ; 

 for, although her indispensable existence obtain for 

 her a kind of royal state, she possesses not the small- 

 est power above any other individual of the hive, 

 or any kind of direction in its concerns. As a proof 

 of the veneration of these communities for royalty, 

 should more than one queen remain after the swarms 

 have gone off, the supernumeraries are infallibly and 

 loyally massacred. The young queens never lay eggs 

 in the parent hive, but depart with the swarms, in 

 order to find their place in a new establishment. 



The queen is hatched in a cell of a totally dif- 

 ferent construction to that of any other bee. Her 



