184 
EXTRACTS.—NATURAL HISTORY. 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
On the Power of the Common Bee to Generate a Queen.— (Conti¬ 
nued from page —The system fell to the ground, upon the attack of Hum¬ 
mel and others; but another theorist immediately rose up, in the person of the 
celebrated Strube, who, taking advantage of the light thrown upon the natural 
economy of the bee by his predecessors, considered, that by the following system, 
he had reconciled all their contrarieties, and removed all their obscurities:— 
Working Bees Queen 
_ > 
y - 
Working Bees 
r - A -s 
Male Female 
r - A -v 
Drones. Imperfect Mother Drones. Perfect Queens. 
According to this system, the Queen, with a double-branched ovarium , lays 
male and female eggs; the male eggs are placed in the small cells, and in the 
first part are bred working bees; the female eggs, however, as soon as the bees 
have brooded some of them in acorn-formed cells, become Queens, which can 
breed both sexes, and from them spring the principal race of all the chief mother 
bees. The majority, however, of these female eggs are placed in small cells, and 
are bred as degraded Queens. The remaining part of the working bees, are those 
which, in the end, are only able to breed drones. The fructification of the Queen 
is performed by the male working bees, and not by the drones : the drones, which 
are bred in the middle of the month of May, derive their existence from the de¬ 
graded Queens. The ovarium of these female bees, cannot properly develope 
itself in the small cells; independently of which, they are in their nature consi¬ 
derably weakened. The impulse to breeding thereby becomes greatly moderated; 
and it is only in the warm months, that the freshness of the honey, and the heat 
of the hive, instigate these w r eak imperfect mothers to propagation. 
They mingle Avith the few drones which are at this time to be found in the 
hive, and contribute to the population of the republic. The eggs from which 
the fii'st drones arise, are laid towards the end of autumn, and, as during the 
winter, they lie beyond the central heat of the hive; they do not develope them¬ 
selves before the spring. It is only when there is a deficiency of male working 
bees, that the Queen is fructified by the drones.—R. Huist, Esq.— Mag. Nat. 
Hist. 
Blue Colour of the Sky. —As the atmosphere extends upwards, its density 
becomes gradually less aud less, and of course its power of reflecting the sun’s 
rays in like proportion diminishes, till at last, at the extreme verge, when it ter¬ 
minates, there is no reflection at all, or total darkness. The extreme strata then 
being most rarefied, have the least powers of reflecting the rays of light, 
and the light thus reflected is of a bluish tint, or consists principally of the blue 
rays. In this manner, a dark-brown mountain, whose surface has small reflec- 
