178 BIRTH OF A QUEEN. 



ing of regret must be expressed, that the natural history of 

 the bee should be loaded with such a mass of absurdity; and 

 that men can be found at the present day, who, being em- 

 ployed in the diffusion of useful knowledge, can combine to 

 uphold such a system of romantic fiction and fallacy, and 

 unblushingly pretend that it has been confirmed by personal 

 experiment. The lash of ridicule is generally smarting and 

 effective ; but in the present instance, it ought to be steeped 

 in the strongest brine, and applied to the individuals above 

 alluded to with the most unmerciful severity ; nor can we 

 entertain the slightest doubt, that after the perusal of the 

 following statements, declared by Huber to have been veri- 

 fied by himself, and acknowledged to be true by some pseudo- 

 apiarians of the present day, we shall be fully sanctioned in 

 our exposure of such a tissue of falsehood and of the 

 grossest improbability. 



The birth of a queen is a momentous day in the monarchy 

 of the bees, as it is the immediate forerunner of one of the 

 greatest events in their government, which is the emigra- 

 tion of a few thousand young and enterprising subjects, 

 to establish a kingdom of their own at a distance from the 

 parent monarchy. The precise day and hour in which a 

 young queen leaves her cell, have been considered by all 

 apiarians as a calculation not easily made, if, indeed, it could 

 be made at all. Huber, however, bounds over difficulties 

 of that kind with the greatest facility, and, accordingly, he 

 made a calculation of the precise hour, in which her youthful 

 majesty was to emerge from her cell ; and not only was the 

 precise time ascertained, but he also informs us that the 

 waving of the cell was so deep, that everything that passed 

 within was, to quote his own words, pretty perceptible, which 

 in reality may be called a case sui generis, for it never hap- 

 pened before, and we will venture to predict that it will never 

 happen again, that a cell of a queen, which is always of a 

 thick and opaque substance, should for the particular accom- 



1 



