PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 125 
though I shall add from other sources such additional ob- 
servations as may serve better to elucidate their history. 
The society of a hive of bees, besides the young brood, 
consists of one female or queen; several hundreds of 
males or drones ; and many thousand workers. 
The female, or queen, first demands our attention. 
Two sorts of females have been observed amongst the 
bees, a large one and asmall. Mr. Needham was the 
first that observed the latter; and their existence, M. P. 
Huber tells us, has been confirmed by several observa- 
tions of his father. ‘They are bred in cells as large as 
those of the common queens, from which they differ only 
in size. ‘Though they have ovaries, they have never been 
observed to lay eggs*. Having never seen one of these, 
for they are of very rare occurrence, my description must 
be confined to the common female, the genuine monarch 
of the hive. 
4 Bonnet, x. P. Huber in Linn. Trans. vi. 233. Reaumur (v. 
373) observes that some queens are much larger than others; but he 
attributes this difference of their size to the state of the eggs in their 
body. 
b As every reader is not aware of the differences of form, &c. that 
distinguish the females, males, and workers from each other (I have 
seen the male mistaken for a distinct species, and placed in a cabinet 
as Apis lagopoda, L.), 1 shall here subjoin a description of eackh.— 
i. The body of the Female bee is considerably longer than that of 
either the drone or the worker. The prevailing colour in all three is 
the same, black or black-brown ;. but with respect to the female this 
-does not appear to be invariably the case; for—not to insist upon 
-Virgil’s royal bees glittering with ruddy or golden spots and scales, 
where allowance must be made for poetic license—Reaumur affirms, 
‘after describing some differences of colour in different individuals of 
this sex, that a queen may always be distinguished, both from the 
workers and males, by the colour of her body*. If this observation 
be restricted to the colour of some parts of her body, it is correct 5 
* Reaumur, v. 375. 
