After the season of swarming, viz. towards the end of July, as is well known, a general _massacre of the drones_ takes place. The business of fecundation being now completed, they are regarded as useless consumers of the fruits of others labour, "fruges consumere nati;" love is at once converted into furious hate, and a general proscription takes place. The unfortunate victims evidently perceive their danger; for they are never, at this time, seen resting in one place, but darting in or out of the hive, with the utmost precipitation, as if in fear of being seized. Their destruction has been generally supposed to be effected by the workers harassing them till they quit the hive: this was the opinion of Mr. Hunter, who says the workers pinch them to and fro, without stinging them, and he considers their death as a natural rather than an untimely one. In this Bonnet seems to agree with Mr. Hunter. But Huber has observed that _their destruction is effected by the stings of the workers:_ he ascertained this by placing his hives upon a glass table, as will be stated under the anatomy of the bee, article "Sting." Reaumur seems to have been aware of this, for he has remarked that "notwithstanding the superiority which the drones seem to have from their bulk, they cannot hold out against the workers, who are armed with a poniard which conveys poison into the wounds it makes." The moment this formidable weapon has entered their bodies, they expand their wings and expire. This sacrifice is not the consequence of a blind indiscriminating instinct, for _if a hive be deprived of its queen, no massacre takes place_, though the hottest persecution rage in all the surrounding hives. This fact was observed by Bonner, who supposed the drones to be preserved for the sake of the additional heat which they would generate in the hive during winter; but according to Huber's theory, they are preserved for the purpose of impregnating a new queen. The lives of the drones are also spared in hives which possess fertile workers only, but no proper queen, and likewise in hives governed by a queen whose impregnation has been retarded; but under any other circumstances the drones all disappear before winter. Not only all that have undergone their full transformations, but every embryo, in whatever period of its existence, shares the same fate. The workers drag them forth from the cells, and after sucking the fluid from their bodies, cast them out of the hive. In all these respects the hive-bees resemble wasps, but with this difference; among the latter, not only are the males and the male larvæ destroyed, but all the workers and their larvæ, (and the very combs themselves,) are involved in one indiscriminate ruin, none remaining alive during the winter but the queens, which lie dormant in various holes and corners till the ensuing spring,--of course without food, for they store none. The importance of destroying these mother wasps in the