126 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1777. 



that no real junction of sexes takes place in bees, but that the eggs which are 

 laid by the queen bee are impregnated by a deposition from the males or drones, 

 in the same manner as the ova of fishes are supposed to be impregnated. The 

 drones which Mr. D. observed thus impregnating the eggs laid in the respective 

 cells by the queen, were of the sniall kind, or such as do not exceed in size the 

 working or common bees, and which are often mistaken for them by persons who 

 are not aware that there are drones of different sizes in a hive. Mr. D. is 

 convinced that the working or common bees have the rudiments of the female 

 sex in them, and that they possess the power of forming a queen from any one 

 of the maggots or larvae by feeding it with a more plentiful nourishment, so as 

 to develope the necessary organs. This Mr. D. has ascertained by placing a 

 piece of brood-comb, in which were contained eggs, worms, and chrysalises, 

 with food, viz. honey, into separate glass hives, and confining in each a suf- 

 ficient number of common bees, with some drones, but taking good care that 

 there should be no queen. The bees, finding themselves without a queen, made 

 a strange buzzing noise for about 2 days, at the end of which time they 

 settled, and betook themselves to work. On the fourth day he perceived in 

 each of those hives the beginnings of a royal cell ; a certain indication that one 

 of the inclosed worms would soon be converted into a queen. The construction 

 of the royal cell being nearly accomplished, he ventured to leave an opening for 

 the bees to get out, and found that they returned as regularly as they do in 

 common hives, showing no inclination to desert their habitation ; and at the 

 end of twenty days he found four young queens among the new progeny. 

 These experiments were repeated several times, in order to remove an objection 

 made to the theory of the bees having the power of raising a common bee- 

 worm into a queen, viz. that the queen bee of a hive, besides the eggs which 

 she deposits in the royal cells, might also have laid royal or female eggs either in 

 the common cells, or indiscriminately throughout the different parts of a hive ; 

 and that in the pieces of brood-comb which had been successfully employed in 

 the experiments for the production of a queen, it had constantly happened that 

 one or more of these royal eggs, or rather worms, proceeding from them, had 

 been contained. But the force of this objection was removed by subsequent 

 experiments, and those who objected to the theory were at length obliged to 

 admit, that every common or working-bee-worm is capable, under certain 

 circumstances, of becoming the mother of a generation ; and that it owes its 

 metamorphosis into a queen partly to the extraordinary size of the cell, and its 

 particular position in it ; but principally lo a certain nourishment appropriated to 

 the occasion, and carefully administered to it by the working-bees while in its 

 worm state; and that it appears evident, from the experiments of Mr. Debraw 

 as well as from those of Mr. Schirach, that the received opinion of the queen 



