VOL. LXXXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 179 



Nov. 18th, 1788, I killed a hive that had not swarmed the summer before, 

 and which was to appearance ready to swarm every day ; but when I supposed 

 the season for swarming was over, and it had not swarmed, I began to suspect 

 that the reason why it did not was owing to there being no young queen or 

 queens ; and I found only one. This is a kind of presumptive proof that I was 

 right in my conjecture ; unless it be supposed, that when they were determined 

 not to swarm, they destroyed every queen except one. In a hive that died, I 

 found no males, and only one queen. This circumstance, that so few queens 

 are bred, must arise from the natural security the queen is in from the mode of 

 their society ; for though there is but one queen in a wasp's, hornet's, and 

 humble bee's nest or hive, yet these breed a great number of queens ; the wasp 

 and hornet some hundreds ; but not living in society during the winter, they 

 are subject to great destruction, so that probably not one in a hundred lives to 

 breed in the summer. I have said that the queen leaves off laying in the month 

 of July ; and now she is to be impregnated by the males before they die. Mr. 

 Riem asserts that he has seen the copulation between the male and the female, 

 but does not say at what season. I should doubt this ; but Mr. Schirach 

 supposes the queen impregnated without copulation. I know not whether he 

 means by this that she is not impregnated at all, and supposes, like Mr. Debraw, 

 that the eggs are impregnated after they are laid, by a set of small drones, who 

 pass over the cells, and thrust their tails down into the cell, so as to besmear the 

 egg.* Mr. Bonnet does not consider it necessary that the drones should be 

 small for this purpose, for he saw a large drone passing over the cells of a piece 

 of comb, stopping at every one which contained an egg, but at no other, and 

 giving a knock with his tail on the mouth of the cell 3 times ; this he supposed 

 was the mode of impregnating the eggs. The number 3 has always been a 

 famous number ; but it will not do where there are no males, which is the case 

 of a hive in the spring, the time when the queen is most employed in laying 

 eggs ; which made him suppose the use of the males was to feed the maggots 

 with their semen. It is probable that the copulation is like that of most other 

 insects. The copulation of the humble bee I have seen : it is similar to the 

 common fly. The sting is extended at the time, and turned up on the back, 

 between the 2 animals : they are some time in this act. In the hornet it is the 

 same. The circumstances relative to the impregnating the queen not being 

 known, great room has been given for conjecture, which, if authors had pre- 

 sented as conjectures only, it would have shown their candour ; but they have 

 given, what in them were probably conceits, as facts. 



Of the male bee. — The male bee is considerably larger than the labourers : he 



• Mr. Debraw, knowing the drones died in the latter end of summer, or the autumn, was 

 obliged to suppose a small set of males, that lived through the winter, for that purpose. — Orig. 



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