Notwithstanding the most persevering attention of Huber and of other ingenious apiarians, and notwithstanding the experiments and expedients had recourse to, to discover the secret, it is still doubtful--it is still undiscovered, in what precise way the Queen-Bee becomes impregnated. No one has ever yet witnessed the fact of her copulation with a drone, either in the hive or elsewhere,--in all probability no one ever will be witness to it; consequently the contradictory conclusions apiarians have come to on this subject are unsatisfactory, because unsupported by sufficient and convincing proofs. Huber, after having made a variety of observations and tried numberless experiments to get at the fact, gives it as his opinion--that the impregnation of the Queen is accomplished by her intercourse with the drone during a flight in the open atmosphere; but modestly states that he never witnessed the act of copulation. On this last point I entirely coincide with him, and firmly believe that no man ever yet has been present to confirm the supposed fact; neither can any person deny the possibility--not to say--the probability of such an union. On the other hand, Mr. Huish is an advocate for the drones in another way, stating them to be the male Bees, and that they fecundate--_not the Queen_, but all the eggs of the Queen, produced by her, the year in which the drones are brought into existence. But Mr. Huish has nowhere stated, in his much admired treatise on Bees, what fecundates those eggs of the Queen which are produced by her in the absence of the drones. It is well-known that those eggs do well and come to perfection, long after the drones have ceased to exist in the hive. _Eggs are laid and matured into Bees when there is not one drone in the hive._ This, therefore, is an argument in favour of Mr. Huber's opinion--namely--that the Queen once impregnated remains so during her life,--and that, as the Queen lives some years, the drones are called into being to fecundate the young Queens, brought into existence for purposes that will be noticed in the next chapter. Neither should we overlook the singular services of the short-lived drones in other circumstances of the colony; for most essential is their presence in the hive during the months of May, June, and July. Do we not in those months behold the extraordinary rapidity with which the working Bees leave their hive in search of materials for their various works? So indefatigable are these admired insects, after enriching their commonwealth, that in the time of honey-dews, scarcely a mechanical labourer is left in the hive. Now, were it not for the drones--those large bodied Bees--what would become of the young larvæ then in existence? It would undoubtedly perish. No sooner, however, is this busy season at an end, than the total destruction of the drones takes place; but not until the animal heat which the drones impart to the hive has