Q^U E Q^U E

Q UEEN-BEE, a name given by late writers towhat used to be called the king-bee, or king ofthe bees ; a large and long-bodied bee, of whichkind there is only one found in every swarm, and whichis always treated with the greatest respect by the rest.See the article Bee.

This is, indeed, the parent of the swarm, and from thefœcundity of this one female, a whole hive is easily andsoon repeopled.

It is to be observed, that the autumn and winter seasonsdestroy a great number of the bees ; so that a hive, whichwas full in the summer, is often found so thinly peopledbefore the end of winter, that the bees seem only a fewinhabitants in a very large city: by Midsummer again th issame hive shall, however, be sound so well filled with in-habitants, that there shall be a necessity of sending out acolony in the name of a new swarm, and yet the hivewill remain as full as it can well hold. This increasemight well appear very amazing, if all the remaining beesof the hive were supposed to be females, artd to join init but how much more so when it must be acknow-ledged, that it is all owing to one female, and that thisqueen-bee, or mother-bee, alone, has given origin to suchan immense progeny.?

The form of this bee, and there being only one such ina hive, naturally led all who saw it into an opinion ofsomething singular in its nature, and the antients deter-mined that it must be the king over the rest : they made itan absolute monarch, and have supposed that all the bu-siness of the hive was done by its immediate orders; andthat the several parties of bees allotted to work in themaking of the combs, in the filling their cells, in the stop-ping the crevices of the hives, and in carrying away thefilth, &c. had all their several stations allotted them by thiswife and provident monarch. This was giving great ta-lents to the monarch bee; but this was mere fancy, andit is plain, that if this creature rules, it is over a peoplewho all perfectly well know their several businesses: but itrather appears, that there is no sovereignity at all, but thatthis creature is respected in a very high degree by therest, as the common parent of the whole nation.

There were not wanting among the antients, however,some who believed this large bee to be a female, and thesepretend that she brought forth only females like herself,which succeed el her in her reign. They had a very dif-ferent opinion as to the origin of the common bees, notsupposing them generated of animal parents like them-selves, but produced out of corruption, and born of-the

flesh of a bull or cow. Among the later writers this opi-nion, notwithstanding the sanction of the poet Virgil, hasbeen laughed out of the world; yet it was long before thetrue origin of bees, even after this, was known. Theauthor of the Female Monarchy, though well apprized ofthis great bee being of the female sex, yet supposed thatshe only produced young ones like herself; and pretendedthat the common bees copulated together for the produc-tion of other bees like themselves: this, however, hasbeen since found to be wholly erroneous, the female, orqueen-bee, giving birth to all, and these common beesbeing of no sex at all. Many of the authors who havenot given into the idle opinion of the bees being bred otputrid flesii, have yet given them an origin not less idleand ridiculous. They pretend that the bees are exempted-from the pain of producing either eggs or young ; andthat the offspring are formed of the juices of flowers, thedifferent kinds, as the drones, females, &c. owing theirrife to juices of different kinds. These, and a number ofother false notions, have been propagated in regard tobees; but their true origin could not well be found tillwe were in a condition to fee what passes at certain timeswithin the recesses of the hive, which is done by the useof that excellent invention, the glass hive. By this, andby the help of dissections, we may easily inform ourselvesperfectly of the true state of the cafe. The parts of gene-ration are the subjects of our enquiry for this purpose,and, though the bodies of these animals are so small,these are usually sufficiently large to be distinguished, oftentaking up more room in the abdomen than all the otherparts together. . Thus, if the large long-bodied bee beopened, the abdomen will be found to contain vast num-bers of oblong bodies, which any one acquainted with in-fects will easily distinguish to be eggs: vast numbers othese are large enough to be observable by the naked eye,but, when the assistance of glasses is called in, there arediscerned a vast number of other small eggs, .which exceed all computation. It is easy to determine from t : U »that this creature, so long esteemed a male, is in rea i-y,a female, and is in condition to give birth to a very numerous posterity. . _

In order to distinguish this, however, a proper timust be chosen for the dissection, and the most proper^all is when the creature is just ready to deposit herThis is in the monchs of April and May, and t e m^certain time of all is. when she is in a hive W ^ es -Vq ie beswarm have been received about ten days before, i ,dissected at other times, the eggs are lels visible; a ^ C yj ar iy