44 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



IMPREGNATION OE QUEENS. 



Having traced this wonderful insect from the egg 

 to the perfectly formed virgin queen, giving an ac- 

 count of various experiments, and the views of differ- 

 ent authors in regard to the rearing of queens, &c. 

 I shall now advert to the more intricate and seem- 

 ingly mysterious process of the impregnation of the 

 queen. 



This is a subject, (as Bevan remarks,) which was 

 long involved in obscurity, and which indeed is still 

 clouded by some uncertainty. Schirach and Bon- 

 ner denied the necessity of sexual intercourse be- 

 tween the queen and drones, considering the former 

 a mother and yet a virgin. Swammerdam held the 

 same opinion ; he ascribes the impregnation to a 

 vivifying seminal aura, which is exhaled from the 

 drones and penetrates the body of the queen. Reau- 

 mur successfully combated this fanciful doctrine, and 

 Huber refuted it by experiment. Reaumur supposed 

 that there was a sexual intercourse, though his ex- 

 periments left that question undecided. 



Arthur Dobbs, Esq. has given it as his opinion, 

 that the queen's eggs were impregnated by coition 

 with the drones, and that a renewal of the inter- 

 course was unnecessary ; he, however, thought that 

 she had intercourse with several, in order that there 

 might be a sufficient deposition of sperm to impreg- 

 nate all her esro-s. 



The experiments of Huber were made upon virgin 

 queens, with whose history he was acquainted from 

 the moment they left their cells. In the course of his 



