Mr. Hunter's Observations on Bees. 
167 
pieces of comb, with one maggot in each ; after two days 
the maggots were all dead, and the bees had desisted from 
labour. * 
A piece of comb, from which all the eggs and maggots had 
been removed, was shut up with some honey, and a certain 
number of workers ; in a short time they became very busy, 
and upon the evening of the second day 300 eggs were found 
in the cells, -f* He repeated this experiment with the same 
result, and the bees were left to themselves : they placed queen 
maggots in the queen cells, newly constructed, and others in 
male cells: the rest were left undisturbed. He again took 
two pieces of comb, which contained neither eggs nor mag- 
gots, and shut them up with a certain number of workers, and 
carried the box into a stove : next evening, one of the pieces 
of comb contained several eggs, and the beginning of a royal 
cell, that was empty. 
Besides the short observations contained in the notes, I beg 
leave to observe, that I have my doubts respecting the whole of 
these experiments, from several circumstances which occurred 
in mine. The three following facts appear much against their 
probability : first, a summer’s evening in this country is com- 
monly too cold for so small a parcel of bees to be lively, so 
as to set about new operations ; they get so benumbed, that 
they hardly recover in the day, and I should suspect that where 
these experiments were made (and indeed some are said to 
have been tried in this country), it is also too cold : secondly, 
* This is the most probable event in the whole experiments. 
f This would show that labourers can be changed into queens at will, and that 
neither they nor their eggs require to be impregnated ; if this was the case, there 
would be no occasion for all the push in making a queen or a male. 
