all the
males were excluded. In two days, we found her impregnated.

These observations at length demonstrate why M. Hattorf obtained results
so different from ours. His queens, though in hives deprived of males,
had been fecundated, and he thence concludes that sexual intercourse is
not requisite for their impregnation. But he did not confine the queens
to their hives, and they had profited by their liberty to unite with the
males. We, on the contrary, have surrounded our queens with a number of
males; but they continued sterile; because the precaution of confining
the males to their hives had also prevented the queens from departing to
seek that fecundation without, which they could not obtain within.

These experiments were repeated on queens, twenty, twenty-five, and
thirty days old. All became fertile after a single impregnation;
however, we have remarked some essential peculiarities in the fecundity
of those unimpregnated until the twentieth day of their existence; but
we shall defer speaking of the fact until we can present naturalists
with observations sufficiently secure and numerous to merit their
attention: Yet let me add a few words more. Though neither my assistant
nor myself have witnessed the copulation of a queen and a drone, we
think that, after the detail which has just been commenced, no doubt of
it can remain, or of the necessity of copulation to effect impregnation.
The sequel of experiments, made with every possible precaution, appears
demonstrative. The uniform sterility of queens in hives wanting males,
and in those where they were confined along with them; the departure of
these queens from the hives; and the very conspicuous evidence of
impregnation with which they return, are proofs against which no
objections can stand. But we do not despair of being able next spring to
obtain the complement of this proof, by seizing the female at the very
moment of copulation.

Naturalists have always been very much embarrassed to account for the
number of males found in most hives, and which seem only a burden on the
community, since they fulfil no function. But we now begin to discern
the object of nature in multiplying them to that extent. As fecundation
cannot be accomplished within, and as the queen is obliged to traverse
the expanse of the atmosphere, it is requisite the males should be
numerous that she may have the chance of meeting some one of them. Were
only two or three drones in each hive, the