CHARACTER OF THE DRONE. 97 



by some naturalists, that a part of their office is the hatch- 

 ing and rearing of the young brood. It is not to be doubted 

 that they promote that operation by the increased heat 

 which their presence occasions in the hive ; but how then is 

 it performed, when there is not a single drone in the hive, 

 that is, at the commencement of the breeding season ? It 

 must also be supposed that this co-operating power was more 

 necessary at that period than at any other, when the exterior 

 state of the atmosphere is not of such a temperature as to be 

 favorable to the hatching of the young brood. It is, how- 

 ever, consistent with experience, that the drones are always 

 to be found in the immediate vicinity of those combs which 

 are filled with brood ; but we are inclined to believe, under 

 those circumstances, that their presence in that particular 

 quarter has no immediate relation to the distinct occupation 

 of hatching the brood, analogous to that of the male pigeon 

 in the office of incubation, but that they frequent those 

 combs only, as it is there, and in no other part of the hive, 

 that the queen deposits her eggs, and, consequently, that 

 their presence is not required in any other place. This 

 opinion of the occupation of the drone is of a very remote 

 date, for we find in an anonymous work, printed in 1572, 

 that the drones are there called brooding bees, and Jacobi, 

 a German author, in 1784, calls them hatching fathers. 



The Abbe della Rocca, who in all matters relative to the 

 bee has an undoubted claim to our attention, is an advocate 

 for the system of the drones being brooding bees ; but he 

 qualifies his opinion by saying, that he does not consider 

 this function to belong so exclusively to those insects, but 

 that, in the absence of them, the bees can execute it equally 

 as well. This, however, we believe to be one of the most 

 unanswerable arguments against the hypothesis ; for nature 



the drones are called R'ohrmeister or Bruinienknechte, which may be translated 

 water-carriers, and the occupation of these insects is supposed by this 

 visionary author to be the conveying of water into the hive. 



