How much each of us deserves the honours conferred on us, is best known to those who have been most benefited by our unceasing endeavours to improve and extend apiarian science. My great object is--not to dispute with the naturalist, the philosopher, or with the apiarian, _how_ the Queen-Bee becomes impregnated: because, be that as it may, it is, no doubt, consistent with the law of nature,--it is, no doubt, a part of that all-prevailing law; and though hitherto undiscovered,--hitherto "one of nature's gambols with the human mind," I do cherish strong hopes that the observatory-hive I have constructed, will on some auspicious, future day, disclose such facts as will set the matter at rest for ever: my great object at present is--to endeavour to improve the culture of Honey-Bees, and to lay before my readers _practical_ instructions for the more humane, and more profitable management of those interesting, little insects. [Footnote H: See Huish on Bees, page 13.] CHAPTER XIII. SUPERNUMERARY QUEENS. In the last chapter we were at sea without a compass by which to steer our course aright,--with two pilots on board, 'tis true; one of them a foreigner, _experienced_ beyond most other men, though aged, and infirm, and defective in his eyesight, but willing, nevertheless, nay--anxious to conduct us to our wished-for haven; the other, though not inexperienced, less practised, it is thought, in voyages of discovery, and more venturesome than his senior in the office, contending that the respectable, old gentleman had put us on a wrong tack,--that we were in a wrong latitude,--that our reckoning was incorrect, and even making merry with the old man's infirmities. Perplexed, and doubting in whom it is most reasonable and safest to confide, we seize the helm ourselves and make to the nearest shore, and luckily land on terra firma--terra cognita, and are now approaching a _field_ with every corner of which we are thoroughly acquainted. But metaphor apart, lest we should not properly sustain it.