To prove further that the eggs are fecundated by the males, and that their presence is necessary at the time of breeding, Mr. Debraw made the following experiments. They consist in leaving in a hive the queen, with only the common or working bees, without any drones, to see whether the eggs she laid would be prolific. To this end he took a swarm, and shook all the bees into a tub of water, leaving them there till they were quite senseless; by which means he could distinguish the drones without any danger of being stung: he then restored the queen and working bees to their former state, by spreading them on a brown paper in the sun; after this he replaced them in a glass hive, where they soon began to work as usual. The queen laid eggs, which, to his great surprize, were impregnated, for he imagined he had separated all the drones or males, and therefore omitted watching them; at the end of twenty days he found several of his eggs had, in the usual course of changes, produced bees, while some had withered away, and others were covered with honey. Hence he inferred, that some of the males had escaped his notice, and impregnated part of the eggs. To convince himself of this, he took away all the brood-comb that was in the hive, in order to oblige the bees to provide a fresh quantity, being determined to watch narrowly their motions after new eggs should be laid in the cells. On the second day after the eggs were deposited, he perceived the same operation that was mentioned before, namely, that of the bees hanging down in the form of a curtain, while others thrust the posterior part of their bodies into the cells. He then introduced his hand into the hive, broke off a piece of the comb, in which there were two of these insects; he found in neither of them any sting, a circumstance peculiar to the drones; upon dissection, with the assistance of a microscope, he discovered the four cylindrical bodies which contain the glutinous liquor of a whitish colour, as observed by Maraldi in the large drones. He was therefore now under the necessity of repeating his experiments, in destroying the males, and even those that might be suspected to be such. He once more immersed the same bees in water, and when they appeared in a senseless state, he gently pressed every one, in order to distinguish those armed with stings from those which had none, and which of course he supposed to be males: of these last he found fifty-seven, and replaced the swarm in a glass hive, where they immediately applied again to the work of making cells, and on the fourth or fifth day, very early in the morning, he had the pleasure to see the queen bee deposit her eggs in those cells: he continued watching most part of the ensuing days, but could discover nothing of what he had seen before.