136 Rev. Mr Dunbar’s Observations on Bees, 
guarded her rival with great composure, seeming neither to 
court nor to shun the mortal strife. 
A singular Circumstance has taken place in this hive since the 
introduction of the stranger swarm, which, while it has given 
me much pleasure^ as verifying an extraordinary fact in the na- 
tural history of this wonderful insect, presents, at the same time^ 
a difficulty which I am unable to solve. The fact to which I 
allude is, that bees have the power, when deprived of their 
queen, of rearing an artificial one from a common worm, pro- 
vided it be Under three days old. In this process, they enlarge 
the original cell which contains the selected worm, by demolish- 
ing the three which surround it, and supply the larva with food 
in greater quantity, and probably of a different quality, from 
that which nourishes the common brood. By this treatment, 
naturalists say that the ovaries,— for all the working bees are 
females,— are expanded and developed, and the insect comes 
forth in due time, not as originally intended, to earn her bread 
by the sweat of her brow, but to assume all the honours of ma- 
jesty, and to become the mother of a numerous race. This ex- 
traordinary fact I have had an opportunity unexpectedly of rea^ 
lizing. 
When I introduced the stranger swarm with their queen into 
the mirror-hive, I expected, agreeably to the experiments de- 
tailed by Huber; that the two rivals, each of whom can bear, 
like the Turk, no rival near her throne,” would decide by duel 
which should retain the honours and privileges of royalty. I 
contemplated also the possibility of both falling in the conflict, 
— an instance of such a calamity having come to my knowledge, 
— -and therefore, with the view of remedying this calamity, if it 
should occur, and thus of preventing the total destruction of the 
hive, I took a piece of comb from another hive, containing eggs 
and common worms of the proper age, and fixed it in the comb 
of the mirror, that the bees might, by proper treatment, convert 
a common worm into a royal one, and thus supply the vacant 
throne. 
To my astonishment, as both queens were alive on the morn- 
ing of the 29th, I saw the workers commence building a royal cell 
in this piece of comb, demolishing several cells aroimd the one they 
had pitched upon, and enlarging this last, giving it a cylindrical 
