ORDER IX. HYMENOPTERA.— THE QUEENS AS DUELLISTS. 325 
off. Sometimes, when this happened, she sang, resuming the attitude which I 
just now described; from that moment the bees became motionless. But 
the fever which had seized on the young queen ended by communicating 
itself to her subjects, and, at a particular moment, they set out under her 
guidance.” 
Tue Queens as Duetrists.— When the emigration is effected, the 
workers which had remained at home set free another female. This one 
acts in the same way as the first. She tries to get at her rivals still impris- 
oned, and whom she can smell in their cradles ; but the guard repel her with 
vigor, and defeat all her attempts, ttll she makes up her mind to emigrate 
with a new swarm. This curious scene is repeated, with the same circum- 
stances, three or four times in the space of a fortnight, if the weather is 
favorable, and the hive well-peopled. In the end, the number of bees is so 
much reduced, that they can no longer keep such vigilant guard round the 
royal cells, and it then happens that two females come out together from 
their cradles. Immediately the two rivals look for each other, and fight, 
and the queen that comes off victorious out of this duel to the death reigns 
peaceably over the people she has won for herself. If, in the tumult which 
precedes the swarming, a female escapes from her prison, it may happen that 
she is carried away in the swarm. In this case the deserters divide into two 
bands; but the weakest in numbers are not long in breaking up, the desert- 
ers going to swell the principal swarm. At last all the troop is reunited, 
and it then contains two queens. As long as the swarm remains fixed on 
its branch, all passes quietly in spite of the presence of a second queen, 
But as soon as it has become domiciled, the affair becomes serious; a duel 
to the death takes place between the two aspirants to the command. Two 
queens cannot exist in the same hive. 
Francis Huber was the first to describe these duels between the queens. 
He describes a combat which he watched on the 12th of May, 1790: “Two 
young queens came out on that day from the cells, almost at the same mo- 
ment, in one of our smallest hives. As soon as they saw each other, they 
dashed one against the other with every appearance of the greatest rage, and 
put themselves in such a position that each one had its antennx seized be- 
tween the teeth of its rival; the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the one 
were opposite to the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the other; they 
had only to bend round the posterior extremity of their bodies, and they 
would have stabbed each other with their darts, and both engaged in the 
combat would have been killed. But it is as if Nature would not allow 
this duel to end by the death of the combatants. One would say that she 
had ordained that those queens, finding themselves in this position (that is 
to say, face to face and abdomen to abdomen), should retreat that very 
NO. XIX. 94 
