STATEMENTS OF LEVETT AND PUDDECOMBE. Ill 



ground, where they soon become victims to hunger, cold, 

 birds, and insects *." 



It must, however, be admitted that it certainly does appear 

 to the uninitiated observer, as if the bee, in the murder of 

 the drone, was by its particular motions, actually performing 

 the act of stinging its victim, and consequently a great 

 allowance ought to be made for the mistake into which the 

 majority of apiarians have fallen, especially when they have 

 been supported in that mistake by so great an authority as 

 Huber : we also admit that we were originally a subscriber 

 to the opinion, that the bee did actually destroy his an- 

 tagonist by the venom of his sting. Subsequent researches 

 however, induced us to draw a different conclusion ; and 

 according to a series of experiments, instituted in the pre- 

 sence of Bonner and other professed apiarians, in which 

 the results were invariably the same, we arrived at last at 

 the positive deduction, that it is at the root of the wing 

 that the act of death is performed f. 



We will however consider the actual consequence of this 



* In an old work, written by John Levett, entitled, " The ordering of bees, 

 or the true history of managing them," published in London in 1634, we 

 find an allusion made to the killing of the drone, in the following words — 

 " At a particular period of the year, the big bees are all killed off and this is 

 done by the little or working bees, who do shoot their darts into the bodies 

 of the big ones ; but I never did see one of these darts in the body, which 

 makes me disposed to think, that the little bees do bite the big ones to death." 



t In the second number of the Transactions of the Western Apiarian Society, 

 which was transmitted to us by their worthy Secretary the late Rev. I. Isaac 

 of Moreton Hampstead, we find a communication addressed to Lord Clifford, 

 respecting a hive belonging to Mr. J. Puddecombe of Moreton, in which that 

 gentleman states, " I now resolved to place the drones and the queen in the 

 hive to which she belonged. The drones were admitted, without any visible 

 resistance ; but as soon as the queen entered, a bee brought her out again by 

 force, and tumbled with her to the ground, and after some struggle stung her 

 in the corslet, and walked off dragging the queen by the sting after it." We 

 have no reason to impugn the veracity of Mr. Puddecombe, but the very cir- 

 cumstance of the bee dragging the queen by the sting goes a great way in 

 confirmation of our argument. It must however be observed, that Mr. 

 Puddecombe's queen was stung in a part which is declared by Huber to be 

 decidedly invulnerable. 



F 4 



