" Their life at this season of the year is more uniform and may be termed simple existence, till the svartn weather arrives again. As they now subsist on their sum mer's industry, they would seem to feed in proportion to the coldness of the sea son; for, from experiment, found the hive grow lighter in a cold week than it did in a warmer, which led to further experi ments.
"Although. an indolent state is very much the condition of bees through the winter, y et progress is making in the queen towards a summer's increase. The eggs in the oviducts are beginning to swell, and, I believe, in the month of March, she is ready to lay them, for the young bees are to swarm in June ; which constitutes the queen bee to be the earliest breeder of any Insect we know. 19 con sequence of this the labourers become sooner employed than any other of this tribe of insects. This, both queen and labourers are enabled to accomplish, from. living in society through the winter ; and it becomes necessary in them, as they have their colony to form early in the summer, which is to provide for itself for the win ter following. All this requires the pro cess to be carried forward earlier than by any other insect, for these are only to have young, which are to take care of them. selves through the summer, not being un der the necessity of providing for the win ter.
" The queen bee, as she is termed, has excited more curiosity than all the others, although much more belong to the la bourers. From the number of these, and from their exposing themselves, they have their history much better made out : but as there is only one queen, and she scarce ly ever seen, it being only the effects of her labour we can come at, an opportuni ty has been given to the ingenuity of con jecture, and more has been said than can well be proved. The queen, the mother of all, in whatever way produced, is a true female, and different from both the la bourers and the male. She is not so large in the trunk as the male, and appears to be rather larger in every part than the la bourers. The scales on the under surface of the belly of the labourers are not uni formly of the same colour over the whole scale, that part being lighter which is overlapped by the terminating scale above, and the uncovered part being darker. This light part does not terminate in a straight line, but in two curves, making a peak ; all which gives the belly a lighter colour in the labouring bees, more espe cially when it is pulled out or elongated. We distinguish a queen from a working bee simply by size, and in some degree by colour, but this last is not so easily ascer tained, because the difference in the co lour is not so remarkable in the back, and the only view we can commonly get of her is on this part ; but when a hive is killed, the best way is to collect all the bees, and spread them on white paper, or put them into water, in a broad, flat-bottomed, shal low, white dish, in which they swim, and by looking ai them singly, she may be dis covered. As the queen breeds the first
year she is produced, and the oviducts never entirely subside, an old queen is probably thicker than a new-bred one, un less indeed the oviducts and the eggs form in the chrysalis state, as in the silk. worm, which I should suppose they did. The queen is perhaps at the smallest size just as she has done breeding ; fur as she is to lay eggs by the month of March, she must begin early to fill again ; but I believe her oviducts are never emptied, having at all times eggs in them, although but small. She has fat in her belly, similar to the other bees.
"It is most probable that the queen which goes off with the swarm is a young one, for the males go off with the swarm to impregnate her, as she must be impreg nated the same year, because she breeds the same year.
" The queen has a sting similar to the working-bee.
" I believe a hive, or swarm, has but one queen, at least I have never found more than one in a swarm, or in an old hive in the winter ; and probably this is what con stitutes a hive ; for when there are two queens, it is likely that a division may be gin to take place. Supernumerary queens are mentioned by Riem, who asserts he has seen them killed by the labourers as well as the males.
"The male bee is considerably larger than the labourers : he is even larger than the queen, although not so long when she is in her full state with eggs : he is con siderably thicker than either, but not longer in the same proportion : he does not terminate at the anus in so sharp a point ; and the opening between the two last scales of the back and belly is larger, and more under the belly, than in the fe male. His proboscis is much shorter than that of the labouring bee, which makes me suspect he does not collect his own honey, but takes that which is brought home by the others; especially as we ne ver find the males abroad on flowers, &c. only flying about the hives in hot weather, as if taking an airing ; and when we find that the male of the humble-bee, which collects its own food, has as long a pro boscis, or tongue, as the female, I think it is from all these facts reasonable to sup pose the male of the common bee feeds at home. He has no sting.