. Notwithstanding these symptoms of delirium, the
bees did not cease to render her the same attention as they ever pay to
their queens, but this one received it with indifference. All that I
describe appeared to me the consequence of amputating the antennae.
However, her organization having already suffered from retarded
fecundation, and as I had observed her instinct in some degree impaired,
both causes might possibly concur in producing the same effect. To
distinguish properly what belonged to the privation of the antennae, a
repetition of the experiment was necessary, in a queen otherwise well
organised, and capable of laying both kinds of eggs.

This I did on the sixth of September. I amputated both the antennae of a
female which had been several months the subject of observation, and
being of great fecundity had already laid a considerable number of
workers eggs, and those of males. I put her into the same hive where the
queen of the preceding experiment still remained, and she exhibited
precisely the same marks of delirium and agitation, which I think it
needless to repeat. I shall only add, that to judge better of the
effect produced by privation of the antennae, on the industry and
instinct of bees, I attentively considered the manner in which these two
mutilated queens treated each other. You cannot have forgot, Sir, the
animosity with which queens, possessing all their organs, combat, on
which account it became extremely interesting to learn whether they
would experience the same reciprocal aversion after losing their
antennae. We studied these queens a long time; they met several times in
their courses, and without exhibiting the smallest resentment. This last
instance is, in my opinion, the most complete evidence of a change
operated in their instinct.

Another very remarkable circumstance, which this experiment gave me
occasion to observe, consists in the good reception given by the bees to
the stranger queen, while they still preserved the first. Having so
often seen the symptoms of discontent that a plurality of queens
occasions, after having witnessed the clusters formed around these
supernumerary queens to confine them, I could not expect they would pay
the same homage to a second mutilated one they still testified towards
the first. Is it because after losing the antennae, these queens have no
more any characteristic which distinguishes the one from the other?

I was the more inclined to admit this c