M. Schirach, a German naturalist, affirms that all the common bees are females in disguise, in which the organs that distinguish the sex, and particularly the ovaria, are obliterated, or at least from their extreme minuteness have escaped the observer’s eye; that every one of these bees, in the earlier period of its existence, is capable of becoming a queen bee, if the whole community should think it proper to nurse it in a particular manner, and raise it to that rank: in short, that the queen bee lays only two kinds of eggs, those that are to produce the drones, and those from which the working bees are to proceed. Schirach made his experiments not only in the early spring months, but even as late as November. He cut off from an old hive a piece of the brood-comb, taking care that it contained worms which had been hatched about three days. He fixed this in an empty hive, together with a piece of honey-comb, for food to his bees, and then introduced a number of common bees into the hive. As soon as these found themselves deprived of their queen and their liberty, a dreadful uproar took place, which lasted for the space of twenty-four hours. On the cessation of this tumult, they betook themselves to work, first proceeding to the construction of a royal cell, and then taking the proper methods for feeding and hatching the brood inclosed with them; sometimes even on the second day the foundation of one or more royal cells were to be perceived; the view of which furnished certain indications that they had elected one of the inclosed worms to the sovereignty. The bees may now be left at liberty. The final result of these experiments is, that the colony of working bees being thus shut up with a morsel of brood-comb, not only hatch, but at the end of eighteen or twenty days produce from thence one or two queens, to all appearance proceeding from worms of the common sort, converted by them into a queen merely because they wanted one.[82] From experiments of the same kind, varied and often repeated, Schirach concludes that all the common working bees were originally of the female sex; but that if they are not fed, lodged, and brought up in a particular manner while they are in the larva state, their organs are not developed; and that it is to this circumstance attending the bringing up the queen, that the extension of the female organs is effected, and the difference in her form and size produced. [82] Schirach Histoire Naturelle des Abeilles.