have sliders, b. b.

The entrance appears at the bottom of each frame. All should be close
but 1 and 12. However it is necessary that they should open at pleasure.

The hive is partly open, fig. 3. and shews how the component parts may
be united by hinges, and open as the leaves of a book. The two covers
closing up the sides, a. a.

Fig. 4. is another view of fig. 1. a a. a piece of comb to guide the
bees; b b. pegs disposed so as to retain the comb properly in the frame;
c c. parts of two shelves; the one above is fixed, and keeps the comb in
a vertical position; the under one, which is moveable, supports it
below.

{C} I cannot insist that my readers, the better to comprehend what is
here said, shall peruse the Memoirs of M. de Reaumur on Bees, and those
of the Lusace Society; but I must request them to examine the extracts
in M. Bonnet's works, tom. 5. 4to edit. and tom. 10. 8vo, where they
will find a short and distinct abstract of all that naturalists have
hitherto discovered on the subject.

{D} Vide M. Schirach's History of Bees, in a memoir by M. Hattorf,
entitled, _Physical Researches whether the Queen Bee requires
fecundation by Drones?_

{E} It will afterwards appear that what we took for the generative
fluid, was the male organs of generation, left by copulation in the body
of the female. This discovery we owe to a circumstance that shall
immediately be related. Perhaps I should avoid prolixity, by suppressing
all my first observations on the impregnation of the queen, and by
passing directly to the experiments that prove she carries away the
genital organs; but in such observations which are both new and
delicate, and where it is so easy to be deceived, I think service is
done to the reader by a candid avowal of my errors. This is an
additional proof to so many others, of the absolute necessity that an
observer should repeat all his experiments a thousand times, to obtain
the certainty of seeing facts as they really exist.

LETTER II.

_SEQUEL OF OBSERVATIONS ON THE IMPREGNATION OF THE QUEEN BEE._

SIR,

All the experiments, related in my preceding letter, were made in 1787
and 1788. They seem to establish two facts, which had previously been
the subject of vague conjecture: 1. The queen bee is not impregnated of
herself, but is fecundated by copulation with the male. 2. Copulation is
accomplished without the hive, and in the air.

The latter appeared so extraordinary, that notwithst