PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 405 



and It becomes troublesome to guard them in the manner here described, 

 they come forth unnoticed, and fight unimpeded till one alone remains to 

 fill the deserted throne of the parent hive. You see here the reason why 

 the eggs that produce these queens are not laid at the same time, but after 

 some interval, that they may come forth successively. For did they all 

 make their appearance together, it would be a much more laborious and 

 difficult task to keep them from destroying each other. 



When the bees thus delay the entrance of the young queens into their 

 world, they invariably let out the oldest first ; and they probably know 

 their progress to maturity by the emission of the sound lately mentioned. 

 The accurate Huber took the trouble to mark all the royal cells in a hive 

 as soon as the workers had covered them in, and he found that they were 

 all liberated according to seinority. Those first covered first emit the 

 sound, and so on successively ; whence he conjectures that this is the sign 

 by which the workers discover their age. As their captivity, however, is 

 sometimes prolonged to eight or ten days, this circumstance in that time 

 may be forgotten. In this case he supposes that their tones grow stronger 

 as they grow older, by which the workers may be enabled to distinguish 

 them. It is remarkable that no guard is placed round the mute queens 

 bred according to the Lusatian method, which, when the time for their 

 appearance is come, are not detained in captivity a single moment ; but, 

 as you have heard, are left to fight, conquer, or die.^ 



You must not think, however, from what I have been saying, that the 

 old queen never destroys the young ones previously to her leading forth 

 the earliest swarm. She is allowed the most uncontrolled liberty of 

 action ; and if she chooses to approach and destroy the royal cells, her 

 subjects do not oppose her. It sometimes happens, when unfavorable 

 weather retards the first swarm, that all the royal progeny perishes by the 

 sting of their mother, and then no swarm takes place. It is to be observed 

 that she never attacks a royal cell till its inhabitant is ready to assume the 

 pupa; therefore much will depend upon their age. When they arrive at 

 this state, her horror of these cells, and aversion to them, are extreme: 

 she attacks, perhaps, and destroys several ; but finding it too laborious, for 

 they are often numerous, to destroy the whole, the same agitation is caused 

 in her as if she were forcibly prevented, and she becomes disposed to 

 depart, rather than remain in the midst of her rivals, though her own 

 offspring. 



But though the bees, in one of these cases, appear such unconcerned 

 spectators of the destruction of royal personages, or rather the applauders 

 and inciters of the bloody fact, and in the other show little respect to 

 them, put such a restraint upon their persons, and manifest such disregard 

 to their wishes ; yet when they are once acknowledged as governors of 

 the hive, and leaders of the colony, their instinct assumes a new and won- 

 derful direction. From this moment they become the '' publico cura'' 

 the objects of constant and universal attention ; and wherever they go, 

 are greeted by a homage which evinces the entire devotion of their sub- 

 jects. You seemed amused and interested in no slight degree by what I 

 related in a former letter of the marked respect paid by the ants to their 

 females^; but this will bear no comparison with that shown by the inhab- 



> Huber, i. 286. « See above, p. 354—355. 



