ose history I
was not acquainted from the origin, and which had perhaps been
impregnated unknown to me. Impressed with this idea, I undertook a new
method of observation not on queens fortuitously taken from the hive,
but on females decidedly in a virgin state, and whose history I knew
from the instant they left the cell.

From a very great number of hives, I removed all the virgin females,
and substituted for each a queen taken at the moment of her birth. The
hives were then divided into two classes. From the first, I took the
whole males both large and small, and adapted a glass tube at the
entrance, so narrow, that no drone could pass, but large enough for the
free passage of the common bees. In the hives of the second class, I
left all the drones belonging to them, and even introduced more; and to
prevent them from escaping, a glass tube, also too narrow for the males,
was adapted to the entrance of these hives.

For more than a month, I carefully watched this experiment, made on a
large scale; but much to my surprise, all the queens remained sterile.
Thus it was proved, that queens confined in a hive would continue barren
though amidst a seraglio of males.

This result induced me to suspect that the females could not be
fecundated in the interior of the hive, and that it was necessary for
them to leave it for receiving the approaches of the male. To ascertain
the fact was easy, by a direct experiment; and as the point is
important, I shall relate in detail what was done by my secretary and
myself on the 29. June 1788.

Aware, that in summer the males usually leave the hive at the warmest
time of the day, it was natural for me to conclude that if the queens
were also obliged to go out for impregnation, instinct would induce them
to do so at the same time as the males.

At eleven in the forenoon, we placed ourselves opposite a hive
containing an unimpregnated queen five days old. The sun had shone from
his rising; the air was very warm; and the males began to leave the
hives. We then enlarged the entrance of that which we wished to observe,
and paid great attention to the bees that entered and departed. The
males appeared, and immediately took flight. Soon afterwards, the young
queen appeared at the entrance; at first she did not fly, but brushed
her belly with her hind legs, and traversed the board a little; neither
workers nor males paid any attention to her. At last, she took flight.
When several feet from t