THE HONEY-BEE. 
97 
to the honey cells for that purpose, she had to 
scramble, often with great difficulty, over the crowd, 
not an individual of which got out of her way, or 
seemed to care whether she fed or starved. But no 
sooner did she become a mother than the scene was 
changed indeed, and all vied in testifying their affec- 
tion and regard ; one after another presented her 
proboscis with food, and at every step of her pro- 
gress, a circle was formed around her by her admir- 
ing subjects. The other circumstance alluded to, 
which varies from the experience of Huber, respects 
the vigilance of the workers in such cases, and the 
sound emitted by the queens. He says, that the 
workers form no guard around the cells of artificial 
queens, and that these last are perfectly mute ; and 
the Naturalist makes some remarks by way of account- 
ing for it.* The above experiment is completely in 
contradiction to this. The cell of the younger queen 
was most strictly guarded, and both emitted the 
sounds alluded to, perhaps once every minute, for 
several hours together. — To these experiments we 
have only to add farther, that, as already stated, we 
have very frequently repeated the same operation, 
and always with success; and that in the summer 
of 1832, we removed the reigning queen of the 
same experimental hive three times successively, 
suffering each queen to remain just long enough to 
lay a score or two of eggs before her removal ; and 
each time the workers laid the foundations of five or 
six royal cells, and brought two or three Queens to 
* Huber, p. 181. 
