144 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
tremity of the latter, and they would have fallen recipro- 
cal victims to each other’s sting.” But nature having 
decreed that these duels should not be fatal to both com- 
batants, as soon as they were thus circumstanced a panic 
fear seemed to strike them, and they disengaged them- 
selves, and each fled away. After a few minutes were ex- 
pired, the attack was renewed in a similar manner with 
the same issue; till at last one suddenly seizing the other 
by her wing, mounted upon her and inflicted a mortal 
wound ?. 
The combats I have here described to you took place 
between virgin queens; but M. Huber found that those 
which had been impregnated were actuated by the same 
animosity, and attacked royal cells with a fury equally 
destructive. When another fertile queen had been in- 
troduced into this hive, a singular scene ensued, which 
proves how well aware the workers are that they cannot 
prosper with two sovereigns. Soon after she was intro- 
duced, a circle of bees was formed round the stranger, not 
to compliment her on her arrival, or pay her the usual ho- 
mage,-~but to confine her, and prevent her escape; for 
they insensibly agglomerated themselves.in such numbers 
round her, and hemmed her in so closely, that in about a 
minute she was completely a prisoner. While this was 
transacting, what was equally remarkable, other workers 
assembled in clusters round the legitimate queen, and im- 
peded all her motions; so that soon she was not more at 
liberty than the intruder. It seemed as if the bees fore- 
saw the combat that was to ensue between the two rivals, 
and were impatient for the event; for they only confined 
@ Huber, i. 174. 
