e eggs of males. At the same time, I removed all the royal
cells, except one that had been sealed five days. One remaining was
enough to shew the impression it would make on the stranger queen
introduced; had she endeavoured to destroy it; this, in my opinion,
would have proved that she anticipated the origin of a dangerous rival.
You must admit the use I make of the word anticipate; it saves a long
paraphrase; I feel the impropriety of it. If, on the contrary, she did
not attack the cell I would thence conclude that the delay of
fecundation, which deprived her of the power of laying workers eggs, had
also impaired her instinct. This was the fact; the queen passed several
times over the royal cell, both the first and the subsequent day,
without seeming to distinguish it from the rest. She quietly laid in the
surrounding cells; notwithstanding the cares incessantly bestowed by the
bees upon it, she never one moment appeared to suspect the danger with
which the included royal nymph threatened her. Besides, the workers
treated their new queen as well as they would have treated any other
female. They were lavish of honey and respect, and formed those regular
circles around her that seem an expression of homage.

Thus, independent of the derangement occasioned by retarded
impregnation, in the sexual organs of queens, it certainly impairs their
instinct. Aversion or jealousy is no longer preserved against their own
sex in the nymphine state, nor do they longer endeavour to destroy them
in their cradles.

My readers will be surprised that queens whose fecundation has been
retarded, and whose fecundity is so useless to bees, should be so well
treated and become as dear to them as females laying both kinds of eggs.
But I remember to have observed a fact more astonishing still. I have
seen workers bestow every attention on a queen though sterile; and after
her death treat her dead body as they had treated herself when alive,
and long prefer this inanimate body to the most fertile queens I had
offered them. This sentiment, which assumes the appearance of so lively
an affection, is probably the effect of some agreeable sensation
communicated to bees by their queen, independent of fertility. Those
laying only the eggs of males probably excite the same sensation in the
workers.

I now recollect that the celebrated Swammerdam somewhere observes, that
when a queen is blind, sterile, or mutilated, she ceases to lay, and the
workers o