Huber has been regarded as a man of a very vivid imagination; and as his eye-sight was defective, he was obliged to rely very much upon the reports of Francis Burnens, his assistant; on both which accounts other apiarian writers have thrown some distrust upon his statements. Huish may be reckoned among the number; he has also made some observations upon Schirach's theory, and treated it with much petulance and ridicule. In answer to him and all other cavillers, I shall detail an experiment made by Mr. Dunbar, in his mirror hive. In July, when the hive had become filled with comb and bees, and well stored with honey; and when the queen was very fertile, laying a hundred eggs a-day, Mr. D. opened the hive and took her majesty away. The bees laboured for eighteen hours before they appeared to miss her; but no sooner was the loss discovered than all was agitation and tumult; and they rushed in crowds to the door, as if swarming. On the following morning he observed that they had founded five queen cells, in the usual way under such circumstances; and in the course of the same afternoon, four more were founded, in a part of the comb where there were only eggs a day or two old. On the fourteenth day from the old queen's removal, a young queen emerged and proceeded towards the other royal cells, evidently with a murderous intent. She was immediately pulled away by the workers, with violence, and this conduct on their part was repeated as often as the queen renewed her destructive purpose. At every repulse she appeared sulky, and cried _peep peep_, one of the unhatched queens responding, but in a somewhat hoarser tone. (This circumstance affords an explanation of the two different sounds which are heard, prior to the issuing of second swarms.) On the afternoon of the same day, a second queen was hatched; she immediately buried herself in a cluster of bees. Next morning Mr. D. observed a hot pursuit of the younger queen by the elder, but being called away, on his return half an hour afterwards, the former was dying on the floor, no doubt the victim of the other. Huber has stated that these artificial queens are mute; but the circumstance noticed by Mr. Dunbar of the two queens, just referred to, having answered each other, disproves that statement. Contrary also to the experience of Huber, Mr. D. found that the cells of artificial queens were surrounded by a guard. I have just adverted to the protection which they afforded to the royal cells, when assailed by the first hatched queen.