§ III.] THE DRONE. 21 



the atmosphere, it is requisite that the males should be 

 numerous, that she may have the chance of meeting 

 some one of them in her flight. Were only two or three 

 in each hive there would be little probability of their 

 departure at the same instant with the queen, or that 

 they would meet her in their excursions ; and most of 

 the females might thus remain sterile." It is important 

 for the safety of the queen bee that her stay in the air 

 should be as brief as possible, as her large size and slow- 

 ness of flight render her an easy prey to birds. It is not 

 now thought that the queen always pairs with a drone 

 of the same hive, as Huber seems to have supposed. 

 On the contrary, it would appear that with bees, as with 

 so many other animals, there is a provision against such 

 interbreeding. Mr. John Hunter, in his " Manual of 

 Bee-keeping," speaks of this as amounting to a law, and 

 thus represents the fact as diametrically opposite to 

 Huber's conclusion. But we believe the question to bp 

 complicated by another — whether the drones that inhabit 

 a particular hive at any given time are regularly born of 

 the same family with that hive, or whether they are not 

 very often to be viewed as " strangers within the gates." 

 At all events, it appears estabHshed that the queen and 

 ■drones within a hive do watch each other's movements 

 when the former is about taking her nuptial flight, and 

 that the union is sometimes consummated close at hand, 

 though certainly never attempted within the precincts of 

 the hive itself. This last circumstance, which by all 



