62 THE QUEEN BEE NEVER LEAVES THE HIVE. 



themselves the decided opponents of the Huberian system 

 of sexual coition. 



Swammerdam rejects the theory of any sexual intercourse, 

 either interiorly or exteriorly of the hive, as a circumstance 

 scarcely possible ; and, not knowing how to account for the 

 fecundation of the queen, he resorted to the antiquated 

 opinion of a prolific effluvium issuing from the male, 

 and which was in such a constant state of emission, 

 that the ovarium of the queen was always in a fecundated 

 state*. 



The circumstance of nine hundred or one thousand 

 drones, all being males, and generated in one season in a 

 hive, with only one female with whom to multiply their 

 species, is in itself strongly refutatory of the hypothesis of 

 coition. Nature furnishes us not with a single precedent, in 

 which such a disparity of sexual power exists, or in which 

 such an extraordinary disproportion of numbers manifests 

 itself between the female and the male. 



The fecundation of a certain portion of the eggs existing 

 at any given period in the ovarium of the queen, is liable 

 to the same objection, and carries with it difficulties, which 

 amount nearly to its almost absolute impossibility. There 

 is, however, one circumstance not yet adverted to, in the 

 system of Huber, which, were no other proof of its falsity 

 existing, would of itself be sufficient to establish it. Huber 

 asserts that the queen leaves the hive for the purpose of 

 being fecundated, whereas, on the other hand, we maintain 

 that the queen never leaves the hive for any purpose what- 

 ever. Huber, however, soon perceived that by sending the 

 queen out of the hive, he had proceeded in defiance of the 



* L'abbe della Rocca, speaking of the copulation of the queen, says, " Leur 

 derriere est souvent courbe en dessous ; c'est leur situation ordinaire ; dans 

 l'accouplement, ' elles montent sur le dos du male.' " Solomon says there is 

 nothing new under the sun ; it must be admitted, however, that it would be 

 something very new in the operations of nature, to observe the female 

 " monter sur le dos du male," for the purpose of procreation. 



