420 
BEE. 
young queen or queens ; and I found only one. 
This is a kind of presumptive proof that I was right 
in my conjecture ; unless it be supposed that, when 
they were determined not to swarm, they destroyed 
every queen except one. In a hive that died, I found 
no males, and only one queen. This circumstance, 
that so few queens are bred, must arise from the na- 
tural security the queen is in from the mode of their 
society ; for, although there is but one queen, in a 
wasp’s, hormet’s, and humble bee’s nest or hive* 
yet these breed a great number of queens ; the wasp 
and hornet some hundreds : but not living in society 
during the winter, they are subject to great destruc- 
tion ; so that probably not one in a hundred lives to 
breed in the summer.” 
The male bees, of which there are a certain num- 
ber in every hive, are even larger than the queen, 
and, of course, considerably superior in size to any 
of the labourers. These seem to be an indolent set 
of beings, kept at the expense of the rest of the 
community, merely to answer the purpose of pro- 
pagation; for at the beginning of autumn, when 
the other bees are satisfied there will be neither 
time nor warmth sufficient to raise another brood, 
they begin to persecute and expel the drones as 
useless members of society. This usage the males 
are obliged tamely to suffer, as they Want the sting 
with which the rest can so ably defend themselves 
when attacked. When the time is come for this 
class to turn out, which is generally about the latter 
end of August or beginning of September, it is to 
