HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 37 



to meet the drone or male bee in the air, where 

 coition takes place. 



I have already noticed that queens reared from 

 larva three or four days old, would emerge from their 

 cells as early as the eleventh or twelfth day from 

 the time of removing the old queen ; whilst those 

 reared directly from eggs would lack three or four 

 days of being sufficiently matured to emerge from 

 the cell, consequently they would be consigned to 

 certain destruction by the perhaps immature queen 

 that came out first, unless it should happen in the 

 swarming season, and the colony designed to swarm. 

 If later in the season than this, the result would be 

 about this : the first queen to emerge from her cell, 

 whether folly developed or not, would destroy all 

 those yet in their cells within a few hours, and cer- 

 tainly before she went abroad to meet the drones to 

 become fertilized ; so that she would be the only 

 dependence of the colony, there being now no eggs 

 in the hive from which to rear another queen, whether 

 sufficiently developed to become a mother or not. 



But suppose she is not sufficiently developed, as a 

 queen or female, to have connection with the drone, 

 and thus become fertilized, but enough so to attempt 

 the desired object, what would be the probable re- 

 sult ? She would either repeat her excursions abroad, 

 to meet the drones, day after day, for a considerable 

 length of time, until she met with some accident that 

 would terminate her existence ; or after a certain time, 

 as some think, she would commence laying drone 

 eggs, being incapable of furnishing any other kind. 



A, 



