184 ruber's description of a swarm. 



guards were called out, and duly posted for the protection 

 of the royal cells, which now amounted to twenty-seven ! ! ! 

 These guards, however, assumed all the pride and pomposity 

 of their elevated station, and whenever the queen showed her- 

 self in the vicinity of a royal cell, they fell pell-mell upon 

 her, and began to treat her in a most indecorous manner; 

 whenever they testified an inclination, however, to be out- 

 rageously impudent, she assumed the dreaded attitude, 

 which had a similar effect to the horn of Sir Huon, for 

 the bees were instantly deprived of all further power of 

 motion. 



We will now proceed with Mr. Huber's description of a 

 swarm, and the various adventures thereunto belonging. 

 So precise and minute was Huber in his observations, that 

 it was a few minutes after eight in the morning that the 

 young queen left the cell ; and it was exactly at half-past 

 twelve, not a moment sooner nor later, that her majesty was 

 seized with a kind of ague fit, shaking, and trembling, 

 and shivering, and exhibiting the most alarming symptoms 

 of the most violent internal agitation. The cause of 

 this ague fit arose from the extraordinary circumstance, 

 so accurately ascertained by Huber from ocular observa- 

 tion, that since the birth of her majesty, the royal cells 

 had sprung up so multitudinously, that she could scarcely 

 make her way to any part of the hive, without running the 

 serious risk of knocking her head against one of them, and 

 consequently exposing herself to the most insolent beha- 

 viour from the different detachments which were stationed 

 for their defence. It amounts almost to a truism, that if a 

 queen, no matter whether she be seated on the throne of 

 England, or on a cell in a bee hive, adopt a particular 

 fashion, no matter how absurd and preposterous that fashion 

 may be, still her subjects will immediately adopt the same, 

 and therefore it is by no means to be considered extraordi- 

 nary, considering the case analogically, that because the 



