COMBAT OF FACTITIOUS QUEENS. 



temperature, and in a vertical position, shall become a female, 

 destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be 

 incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour— that 

 this very same foetus, if fed with more simple food, in a lower 

 temperature, in a more confined and horizontal habitation, shall 

 come forth a worker, zealous for the good of the community, a 

 defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity from the 

 stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition — laborious, 

 industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful, — incessantly engaged in 

 the nurture of the young, in collecting honey and pollen ; in 

 elaborating wax ; in constructing cells, and the like ; paying the 

 most respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had 

 its ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued 

 with the most vindictive fury until it had destroyed them ! 

 Further, that these factitious queens, thus produced from worker 

 eggs treated as above described, shall differ remarkably from the 

 natural queens proceeding from royal eggs in being altogether 

 mute ! All this must seem so improbable, and next to impossible, 

 that it would require the strongest and most irrefragable evidence 

 to establish it.* 



141. It will be remembered that the princesses, when forcibly 

 confined to their native cells by the workers on guard over them, 

 after they have undergone the last transformation, utter a peculiar 

 sound, to the varieties of which Huber ascribes the power of the 

 workers to determine their relative ages. Kirby in the observa- 

 tions just quoted, refers to this, when he indicates one of the 

 distinctions between the factitious and natural queens, the former 

 never uttering these or any other sounds. 



142. Another remarkable distinction between the factitious and 

 natural queens is indicated by Huber ; no guard is kept at the 

 doors of the cells of factitious princesses, like that which has been 

 already described in the case of the cells of natural princesses. 

 The factitious princesses, unlike the natural, are not detained in 

 their cells after they have undergone the last transformation, but 

 are allowed to issue forth, if they have not been already destroyed 

 by the jealous rage of the first which comes to life. 



This peculiarity in the policy of the hive may be explained by 

 the fact, that while the natural princesses are wanted to take the 

 sovereignties of the successive swarms, the factitious ones are only 

 produced to meet the extraordinary emergency of the hive being 

 deprived of its queen, leaving behind her no royal brood, and 

 since only one queen is wanted, the factitious princesses are 

 allowed, and indeed encouraged, by the workers to engage in 



* Kirby, Int., vol. ii. 110.- 



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