168 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
struct cells for this purpose*. The young queens that 
conduct the secondary swarms usually pair the day after 
they are settled in their new abode; when the indiffe- 
rence with which their subjects have hitherto. treated 
them is exchanged for the usual respect and homage. 
We may suppose that one motive with the bees for 
following the old queen, is their respect for her; but the 
reasons that induce them to follow the virgin queens, to 
whom they not only appear to manifest no attachment, 
but rather the reverse, seem less easy to be assigned. 
Probably the high temperature of the hive during these 
times of tumultuous agitation may be the principal cause 
that operates upon them. In a populous hive the ther- 
mometer commonly stands between 92° and 97°; but. 
during the tumult that precedes swarming it rises above 
104°, a heat intolerable to these animals». This is: 
M. Huber’s opinion. Yet still, though a high temperature 
will well account for the departure of the swarm from 
the hive with a virgin queen, if there were really no at- 
tachment, (as he appears to think,) is it not extraordi- 
nary, that when this cause no longer operates upon them, 
they should agglomerate about her, as they always do,. 
be unsettled and agitated without her, and quiet when. 
she is with them? Is it not reasonable to suppose that 
the instinct which teaches them what is necessary for the 
preservation of their society,—at the same time that it 
shows them that without a queen that society cannot. be 
preserved,—impells them in every case to the mode of 
treatung her which will most effectually influence her 
> Huber, i, 306. @ Ibid, 280, 
