19 
and domestic economy of the colony, which some authors 
impute to the queen, does not exist in nature. Each bee is: 
engaged in the performance of that part of service for which 
it is fitted. ‘The queen is appointed to lay wherever she 
can find cells to place her eggs. The drones are to fecun- 
date the eggs when laid, and the neuters, or workers, are to 
construct combs and cells, where these eggs are to be de- 
posited, and finally to fill the cells with honey, after the young 
bee shall have left them. All this is done by the instinct 
alone with which nature has endowed each of these insects. 
M. Valmont de Bomare says: ‘The mother bee is the soul 
of the hive. If she happen to die, all work ceases, and 
the bees suffer themselves to die of hunger. That their at- 
tachment for her is equal to her usefulness in the state. 
That the queen never uses her power, but for the happi- 
ness of her subjects. This philosopher does not relate all 
the horrors of a family of bees on the death of a queen. 
The whole prosperity of the colony turns on the fecun- 
dity of the queen. ‘The instant she dies, there is a general 
mourning in the hive. ‘The bees abandon themselves to 
' fury, and to all the excesses of the most complete anarchy. 
‘They pillage the honey, and tear the combs in pieces, if no 
embryo queen remain in the hive. But in the midst of this 
confusion, if another queen, or the embryo of another 
queen, taken in a piece of a comb from another hive, could 
be introduced among them, the mourning and anarchy 
would instantly cease, and the bees would resume their 
labours. , 
Our moderns pretend, that on the death of a queen, the 
bees can take a worm, which nature intended to form into 
a working bee, and make of it a new queen! This opinion 
is absurd, and violates the immutable laws of nature. 
—— 
CHAPTER IV. 
OF THE DRONES. 
The drone is easily distinguished from the other bees. 
He is not so long as the queen, but is much larger; and 
when he goes out of, or returns into the hive,, his flight is 
announced by a droning sound, from which he takes his 
name. es 
