HYMENOPTERA. 341 
to emigrate with anew swarm. This curious scene is repeated, 
with the same circumstances, three or four times in the space of a 
fortnight, if the weather is favourable, 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 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 
separate bands, but the weakest in numbers are not long in 
breaking up, the deserters 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. One of them is de trop, 
and must be got rid of. 
Francis Huber was the first to describe these duels between the 
queens. We quote an interesting account which he has left us 
of a combat which he watched on the 12th of May, 1790 :—“‘Two 
young queens,” says he, “came out on that day from the cells 
almost at the same moment, 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 antenne seized between 
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 reciprocally have stabbed each 
other with their darts, and both engaged in the combat would 
have been killed. But it seems 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), 
