90 ERRONEOUS STATEMENTS OF HUBER. 



discoveries of Huber, and who can still uphold them as 

 the result of direct experimental knowledge. For our own 

 part, we hold the retarded impregnation of Huber as one 

 of the most irrational, deceptive, and visionary portions 

 of his theory, and in the investigation of it, Huber may 

 with the greatest regard to truth declare, that he finds 

 himself in an abyss in which he is lost. To those, who 

 are in the least acquainted with the internal economy of 

 a hive, can anything be imparted to them more fraught 

 with error than the following statement, as sent forth by 

 Huber, and acknowledged by his disciples to be true ?— " In 

 the natural state of things, that is, where fecundation has 

 not been postponed, the queen lays the eggs of workers 

 in forty-six hours after her union with the male, and continues 

 for the subsequent eleven months to produce these alone, 

 and it is only after this period that a considerable laying of 

 the eggs of drones commences. These male eggs require 

 eleven months to arrive at maturity, but under the effects of 

 retardation, they are matured in forty-six hours. This period 

 of eleven months includes the time that the ovipositing 

 of the queen is suspended by the frost, and it is always 

 proportionate to the subsistence which the bees can find in the 

 fields. About the eleventh month, which in our climate 

 arrives in March or April, the queens, heavy and big, 

 begin to lay male eggs ; twenty days afterwards the working 

 bees construct the royal cells, in which the queens without 

 discontinuing the laying of the male eggs, deposit, at the 

 interval of one, two, or three days, those eggs from which the 

 queens are successively to spring. The eggs of workers, 

 which in the usual state of things would have been laid 

 first, never come to light ; their vitality has been destroyed 

 by some vitiation which has taken place, and the cause of 

 which has not yet been discovered." — Well, indeed, may 

 Huber say, that in contemplating the difficulties attending 

 this subject, he finds himself in an abyss in which he is 



