Five or six days after issuing from the cell--Neighbour says the third day--if the day is pleasant, the queen goes forth on her "marriage flight" otherwise she will improve the first pleasant day thereafter for this purpose. Huber was the first to prove that impregnation always takes place on the wing. Bonnet also proved that the same is true of ants, though in this case millions of queens and drones often swarm out at once. I have myself witnessed several of these wholesale matrimonial excursions among ants. I have also frequently taken bumble-bees in copulo while on the wing. I have also noticed both ants and bumble-bees to fall while united probably borne down by the expiring males. That butterflies! moths, dragon-flies, etc., mate on the wing is a matter of common observation. That it is possible to impregnate queens when confined, I think very doubtful. The queens will caress the drones, but the latter seem not to heed their advances. That this ever has been done I also question, though many think they have positive proof that it has occurred. Yet, as there are so many chances to be mistaken, and as experience and observation are so excessive against the possibility, I think that these may be cases of hasty or inaccurate judgment. Many, very many, with myself, have followed Huber in clipping the queen's wing, only to produce a sterile or drone-laying queen. Prof Leuckart believes that successful mating demands that the large air-sacks (Fig. 2, _f_) of the drones shall be filled, which he thinks is only possible during flight. The demeanor of the drones leads me to think, that the excitement of flight, like the warmth of the hand, is necessary to induce the sexual impulse. I presume, that in all the future, Huber's statement that the queen must take wing to be impregnated, will remain unrefuted. Yet it will do no harm to keep trying. Success may come. Mating, too, in green-houses or rooms is also impracticable. I have given this thorough trial. The drones are incorrigible cowards, and their inordinate fear seems even to overcome the sexual desires. If the queen fails to find an admirer the first day, she will go forth again and again till she succeeds. Huber stated that after twenty-one days the case is hopeless. Bevan states that if impregnated from the fifteenth to the twenty-first she will be largely a drone-laying queen. That such absolute dates can be fixed in either of the above cases is very questionable. Yet, all experienced breeders know that queens kept through the winter as virgins are sure to remain so. It is quite likely that the long inactivity of the spermatheca wholly or in part paralyzes it, so that queens that are late in mating cannot impregnate the eggs as she desires. This would accord with what we know of muscular organs. Berlepsch believed that a queen that commenced laying as a virgin could never lay impregnated eggs, even though she afterwards mated. Langstroth thought that he had observed to the contrary.