Immediately on the loss or removal of a queen, the whole hive is a scene of tumult and disorder : the bees seem to anticipate their own destruction, by the precaution they take to guard against it. Should there be neither eggs nor brood in the combs, they will infallibly perish ; their instinctive faculties arc lost, they have no object for which their labours are united, they cease to collect honey and prepare wax, and in a short time they disappear and die. But if there be brood in the combs, the industry of the bees continues unabated; for by the proceeding which they follow, they know that their loss will be repaired. Having selected a worm three days old or less, they sacrifice three of the contiguous cells, that the cell of the worm may be formed into one adapted to breed a queen. They next supply it with the necessary food, which is not the common farina, pollen, or bee-bread, on which the yOung of workers feed, but a peculiar kind of paste or jelly, of a pungent taste, which is reser ved for queens alone. A cylindrical enclosure is raised around the worm, whereby its cell becomes a perfect tube with its origin-al rhomboidal bottom; for that part remains untouched. Were it injured, the fabric of the other three cells on the opposite side of the comb would be deranged, which would be a needless waste.. The cell is still horizontal like the rest in the comhs, and thus remains during the first three days of the existence of the worm ; but the bees in prosecuting its enlargement, alter its direction, and form it to hang perpendicularly, as all those cells do which have been inhabited by queens. In performing this essen tial part of the operation, they do not scruple to de stroy the worms surrounding the tube, and use the wax of their cells in constructing the new part, which they apply at right angles to the first, and work downwards. The cell is then of a pyramidal figure, usually near the edges of the combs ; it insensibly de creases from the base, and is 'closed at the top when the included worm is ready to undergo' its transfor mation to a nymph. When reaching maturity, the seal is broken, and a queen comes forth qualified to. fulfil every indispensible function on which the pre servation of so many thousand lives depends. Work ing bees have therefore the power of effecting the metamorphosis of one of their own species, to avert the effects of a loss which would prove,the utter ruin. of the whole colony.
A question extremely abstruse, and difficult in the physiology of animated existence, here presents itself.. Whence does it happen that bees are susceptible of so great a change ? and that an animal naturally sterile, and possessing certain definite habits and properties; which it is death to interrupt or alter, should be con verted into a creature of different figure, uncommon fertility, and endowed with instincts bearing little or no resemblance in the one state compared with the other ?. Some naturalists have endeavoured to seek the cause of this singular fact in the food with which the larva is supplied in its cell. That food, they affirm, is not• the same as what is given to the young of common. bees, as may easily be discovered by its taste and consistency. It possesses a certain quality which af fects the organization of the insect, it enlarges the size, expands the ovaries, and operates the whole al teration, By similar reasoning they endeavour to explain the cause of that fertility, which is at times, ' though rarely, seen in workers. These workers they
suppose to have inhabited cells in the immediate vi. cinity of royal cells, during the earlier part of their own existence. Particles of thefood appropriated for queens having accidentally fallen among what was des-. tincdfor the common worms, produces a partial change in particular organs. Though under its influence, the ovaries are but imperfectly expanded, and also labour under a vicious conformation, which unfits them from propagating any eggs excepting those transforming to drones. We cannot subscribe to these doctrines, which proceed from the most intelligent naturalists of the present age, because they are unsupported by experi ment. 1 he subject is to us still wrapt in mystery; nor is it to be aided by any fact with which we are acquainted in the generation of animals. Perhaps it affords some reason for believing, that the germs of all animals are of one sex only, it may be of no sex, but possessing organs susceptible, in certain eases, of a different kind of evolution. We are indebted to Schirach for,the original discovery of this property enjoyed by bees, which has subsequently been con firmed by other observers.
These being the imperfect stages which bees under go, and their ultimate transformation being com pleted, three different kinds, females, males,, and workers, whose offices, nature, and properties, are also different from those of each other, inhabit the same swarm. In common with other insects, they are of a lighter colour at the moment of issuing from the cells, and totally covered with hair, which is less abundant on the queen. The quantity of it seems to diminish with their age: it is not known how long they survive, but most probably above one or two years, or considerably more. The queens and drones of smaller size, sometimes found in hives, are regard. ed as aberrations from the general race. Their na ture has not hitherto been fully illustrated ; but na turalists have ascribed this diminution to the eggs producing them having accidentally been laid in wrong cells : that their organs are there cramped and confined, and prevented from attaining their due expansion from the smallness of the cell. At the same time, though the eggs produeing.workers are laid in cells of greater than ordinary size, the reverse does not ensue, and the body is still restrained to its natural dimensions. Schirach obscurely hints his opinion, that the greater length of the queen is-owing to the greater length of her eelL NVe shall next explain the peculiar office and func tions of each species of bees, the queens, drones, and workers, in their perfect state, and skew the mutual relation that must subsist among them, in order to ensure the welfare of the community. In the history of other insects, nothing more is taken into consider ation than a general view of the structure, habits and perpetuation of the race. But in treating of bees, we have not only to enter on the origin of each va riety in a hive, to follow it through its successive until gaining perfection, to examine that in ternal creonotny which the instinct of .many thousand individuals regulates ; but we have to spew the cul tivator, who designs.converting their labours -to ad , vantage, how their nature operates separately as well as combined.