172 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



He says, " you must examine the hive, and view what honey- 

 combs it has ; then afterwards from the wax which contains 

 the seeds of the young bees, you must cut away that part 

 wherein the offspring of the royal brood is animated : for this 

 is easy to be seen ; because at the very end of the wax- 

 works there appears, «s it were, a thimble-like process (some- 

 what similar to an acorn,) rising higher, and having a wider 

 cavity, than the rest of the holes, wherein the young bees of 

 vulgar note are contained." 



Hyginus, who flourished before Columella had evidently 

 noticed the royal jelly ; for he speaks • of cells larger than 

 those of the common bees, " filled as it were with a solid 

 substance of a red color, out of which the winged king is at 

 first formed." This ancient observer ,must undoubtedly 

 have seen the quince-like jelly, a portion of which is always 

 found at the base of the royal cells, after the Queens 

 have emerged. The ancients generally called the Queen a 

 king, although Aristotle says that some in his time called her 

 the mother. Swammerdam was the first to prove by dissec- 

 tion that the Queen is a perfect female, and the only one in 

 the hive, and that the drone is the male. 



For reasons which I shall shortly mention, the- ancient 

 methods of artificial increase appear to have met with but 

 small success. Towards the close of Ihe last century, a 

 new impulse was given to the artificial production of swarms, 

 by the experiments and discoveries of Schirach, a German 

 clergyman, who introduced to the notice of the apiarian 

 world the fact previously known to a few, that bees are able 

 to rear a Queen from worker brood. For want, however, 

 of a more thorough knowledge of some important principles 

 in the economy of the bee, these efforts met with but slender 

 encouragement. 



Huber, after his splendid discoveries in the physiology of 



