Aarts of the Drone Bee. 71 
“ them between my fingers, in order to diftin- 
* guifh thofe armed with ftings from thofe 
“ that had none, which laft I might fufpect to 
bei males. « Of thefe, 1, found «itty feven, 
“ exactly of the fize of common bees, yielding 
“a little whitifh liquor on being prefied be- 
“ tween the fingers.” 
He farther alledges, that if there be only a 
Queen and bees that have ftings in a hive, ai- 
though the Queen lays eggs, yet if fhe has no 
drones to inject the feminal matter upon them, 
the eggs will ftill remain unproductive, and 
will decay, even although there were 1000 bees 
with ftings in the hive. In anfwer to this, I 
fhall here narrate an experiment I made fe- 
_ veral years ago. : 
On the firft of Sept. 1788, 1 took all the 
bees out of a hive that was breeding very faft, 
and in which I found only four drones, which 
I killed. I put the. bees into a hive that had 
nothing in it but empty combs. After wait- 
ing ten days, upon looking between the combs, 
I found maggots newly fealed up, in the cells, 
I then took out all the bees, and fhook them in- 
to a tub full of water, from which immerfion 
I recovered them gradually, and while doing 
this, I prefled each bee individually, to try if 
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