PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



Ill 



lower temperature, in a more confined and horizontal habita- 

 tion, shall come forth a worker zealous for the good of the 

 community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an im- 

 munity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of 

 parturition — laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful 

 — incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young ; in col- 

 lecting honey and pollen ; in elaborating wax ; in constructing 

 cells, and the like ! — paying the most respectful and assiduous 

 attention to objects which, had its ovaries been developed, it 

 would have hated, and pursued with the most vindictive fury 

 till it had destroyed them ! Further, that these factitious 

 queens (I mean those that the bees elect from amongst worker 

 brood, and educate to supply the place of a lost one in the 

 manner just described) shall differ remarkably from the na- 

 tural queens (or those that have been wholly educated in a 

 royal cell), in being altogether mute. 1 All this, you will think 

 at first sight so improbable, and next to impossible, that you 

 will require the strongest and most irrefragable evidence before 

 you will believe it. 



In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the contrary, 

 this astonishing and seemingly incredible fact rests upon 

 strong foundations, and is established by experiments made 

 at different times, by different persons of the highest credit, 

 in different parts of Europe. The first who brought it before 

 the public (as I lately observed) was M. Schirach, secretary 

 of an Apiarian Society established at Little Bautzen in Upper 

 Lusatia. He observed that bees, when shut up with a portion 

 of comb containing only worker brood, would soon erect 

 royal cells, and thus obtain queens : — the experiment was 

 frequently repeated, and the result was almost uniformly the 

 same. In one instance he tried it with a single cell, and it 

 succeeded. 2 This curious fact was communicated to the 

 celebrated Bonnet, who, though he hesitated long before he 

 admitted it, was at length fully convinced. M. Wilhelmi 

 (Schirach's brother-in-law), though at first he accounted for 

 the fact upon other principles, and objected strongly to the 

 doctrine in question, induced by the powerful evidence in 



i Huber, i. 292. 



2 Bonnet, x. 



