44 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



IMPREGNATION OF QUEENS. 



Having traced this wonderful insect from the egg 

 to the perfectly formed virgin queen, giving an ac- 

 count of various experiments, and the views of differ- 

 ent authors in regard to the rearing of queens, &c. 

 I shall now advert to the more intricate and seem- 

 ingly mysterious process of the impregnationof the 

 queen. 



This is a subject, (as Bevan remarks,) which was 

 long involved in obscurity, and which indeed is still 

 clouded by some uncertainty. Schirach and Bon- 

 ner denied the necessity of sexual intercourse be- 

 tween the queen and drones, considering the former 

 a mother and yet a virgin. Swammerdam held the 

 same opinion ; he ascribes the impregnation to a 

 vivifying seminal aura, which is exhaled from the 

 drones and penetrates the body of the queen. Reau- 

 mur successfully combated this fanciful doctrine, and 

 Huber refuted it by experiment. Reaumur supposed 

 that there was a sexual intercourse, though his ex- 

 periments left that question undecided. 



Arthur Dobbs, Esq. has given it as his opinion, 

 that the queen's eggs were impregnated by coition 

 with the drones, and that a renewal of the inter- 

 course was unnecessary ; he, however, thought that 

 she had intercourse with several, in order that there 

 might be a sufficient deposition of sperm to impreg- 

 nate all her eggs. 



The experiments of Huber were made upon virgin 

 queens, with whose history he was acquainted from 

 the moment they left their cells. In the course of his 



