112 



PEEFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



favour of it, at last gave up his former opinion, and embraced 

 it. And, to mention no more, the great Aristomachus of 

 modern times, M. Huber, by experiments repeated for ten 

 years, was fully convinced of the truth of Schirach's position. 1 



The fact in question, though the public attention was first 

 called to it by the latter gentleman, had indeed been practically 

 known long before he wrote. M. Yogel, in a letter to Wil- 

 helmi, asserts that numerous experiments confirming this 

 extraordinary fact had been made by more than a hundred 

 different persons, in the course of more than a hundred years ; 

 and that he himself had known old cultivators of bees who 

 had unanimously declared to him, that, when proper precau- 

 tions were taken, in a practice of more than fifty years, the 

 experiment had never failed.' 2 Signor Monticelli, the Nea- 

 politan professor before mentioned, informs us that the Greeks 

 and Turks of the Ionian Islands know how to make artificial 

 swarms ; and that the art of producing queens at will has 

 been practised by the inhabitants of a little Sicilian island 

 called Favignana, from very remote antiquity ; and he even 

 brings arguments to prove that it was no secret to the Greeks 

 and Romans 3 , though, had the practice been common, it 

 would surely have been noticed by Aristotle and Pliny. 



Bonner, a British apiarist, asserts that he has had successful 

 recourse to the Lusatian experiment 4 ; and Mr. Payne of 

 Shipdam in Norfolk (who for many years has been engaged 

 in the culture of bees, and has paid particular attention to 

 their proceedings) relates that he well remembers that the 

 bees of one of his hives, which he discovered had lost their 

 queen, were engaged in erecting some royal cells upon the 

 ruins of some of the common ones. He also informs me that 

 he has found Huber's statements, as far as he has had an op- 

 portunity of verifying them, perfectly accurate. 5 



i Huber, i. 132. 2 Schirach, 121. 



3 Huber, ii. 453. 4 Bonner On Bees, 56. 



s The same gentleman subsequently sent me the following memoranda : — 



July 10. 1320. A late second swarm was hived into a box constructed so 

 that each comb could be taken out and examined separately. On the 7th of 

 August the queen was removed, and each comb taken out and closely examined ; 

 there was not the least appearance of any royal cells, but much brood and eggs 

 in the common ones. On the 14th, three royal cells were observed nearly 

 finished, with a large grub each. On the 16th, the three cells were sealed. On 



