10 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
swarms of bees will readily do. They are spoken 
of more as enriching the neighbourhood generally, 
by augmenting the number of bees abroad, than 
as conducing to the well-being of any particular 
bee-owner. 
Herein, no doubt, is to be found a clue to the 
whole mystery. If it was not the honey-bee—the 
Apis mellifica of modern naturalists—which was 
generated from the entombed body of Virgil’s un- 
fortunate bull-calf, what other insect, closely re- 
sembling a bee, could have been produced under 
those conditions? The answer has been readily 
given by several naturalists of our own time. 
There is a fly, called the drone-fly, which exactly 
meets the difficulty. He is so like the ordinary 
honey-bee that on one occasion, and that recently, 
he was mistaken for the genuine insect by one 
calling himself a bee-expert, and holding a diploma 
officially entitling him to the use of that name. 
This drone-fly would have behaved almost exactly 
as Virgil’s calf-bred bees are said to have behaved, 
and according to the various descriptions of the 
matter given by other writers living before and 
since. He would issue forth in a dense cloud imme- 
diately his natal prison-doors were opened, and he 
would comport himself in other waysexactly as enu- 
merated. Finally, he would beget himself joyously 
to the open country, as a swarm of bees would do; 
and once more the Virgilian theory of bee-produc- 
tion would meet with its seeming verification. 
