100 DEATH OF THE DRONE AFTER COPULATION. 



expressing our surprise, that he should have advanced so 

 singular a doctrine, as that the drone, like the moth of the 

 silkworm, dies immediately after copulation *. Had he 

 advanced this untenable hypothesis on his mere conjecture, 

 we should have been induced to ascribe it to a redundancy 

 of fancy ; but that he should assert it as the result of ocular 

 demonstration, authorizes us to call in question his skill and 

 knowledge as an apiarian. We know that Huber also 

 entertained this opinion, and in our analysis of his system 

 in a subsequent part of this work, we shall enter more fully 

 into a detail of the alleged death of the drone after copula- 

 tion ; but, in the mean time, we doubt not that the following 

 romantic story of the amours of the queen bee and her 

 favourite drone, as witnessed and related by Mr. Reaumur, 

 will be perused by every keeper of bees with great interest, 

 leaving every one to attach his belief to that part of it which 

 may have fallen within his own experience. 



" I enclosed," says Mr. Reaumur, for we will translate the 

 whole passage freely, " a young queen with a drone in a glass 

 vessel. I saw with surprise, that for all the civility and kind- 

 ness which the common bees entertain for the queen, she 

 in return testifies the same for the drone. She caressed him 

 first with her proboscis, then with her feet, as she walked 

 round him, offering him at the same time some honey f. 

 The drone bore all these dalliances in the most stupid 



* "We find this opinion also advanced in der Oesterreichische Bienen-Mei&ter, 

 Oder vollstdndiger in Gestalt eines Katechisrnus abgefasster Unterricht in der 

 Bienenzucht,von J. M. 0. Miitler, printed at Vienna in 1783. 



t Mr. Reaumur is not singular in having viewed this phenomenon. Joseph 

 Pbssl, in his Praktischer Bienen Katechisrnus fur das Landvolk, und Bienen- 

 freunde, printed at Miinchen in 1787, also mentions that the queen mounts 

 upon the back of the drone, and that she is often obliged to caress the slug- 

 gish drone before his passions can be excited, and sometimes even to feed 

 him. This author asserts, that he has often viewed the process of coition. 

 We consider it, however, as the mere repetition of the vagaries of former 

 authors, and which are now repeated, in the works of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as well as in the Naturalists' Library, with 

 all the confidence of demonstrative experience. 



