"But mark, of royal port, and awful mien, Where moves with measur'd pace the +Insect Queen+! Twelve chosen guards, with slow and solemn gait. Bend at her nod, and round her person wait." +Evans.+ Mr. Dunbar's observations, upon the movements of the queen in his mirror-hive, do not correspond altogether with what is here stated. He says that he did not find her majesty attended in her progress by a guard, but that wherever she moved the way was cleared; that the heads of the workers whom she passed upon her route were always turned towards her, that they fawned upon and caressed her, touching her softly with their antennæ; but that as soon as she moved onwards, they resumed their labours, whilst all that she passed in succession paid her the same homage. This sort of _homage_ is only _paid to fertile queens;_ whilst they continue virgins, they are not treated with much respect. The queen is very numerously surrounded, when depositing her first eggs in the cells, her attendants then cling to one another and form a living curtain before her, so completely impenetrable to our eyes, as to preclude all observation of her proceedings; unless the apiarian use the leaf-hive of Huber, or the mirror-hive of Dunbar, it is hardly possible to snatch a sight of her, excepting when she lays her eggs near the exterior parts of the combs. The manner in which bees attach themselves to each other, when forming a curtain, or when suspending themselves from a bough, or taking their repose, is, by each bee, with its two fore-claws, taking hold of the two hinder legs of the one next above it, thus forming as it were a perfect grape-like cluster or living garland. Even when thus intertwined with each other, as Swammerdam has observed, they can fly off' from the bunch, and perch on it again, or make their way out from the very centre of the cluster, and rush into the air. This mode of suspension, so voluntarily adopted, must be agreeable to them, though the uppermost bees evidently bear the weight of all the rest. Mr. Wildman supposes that they have a power of distending themselves with air, like fishes, by which they acquire buoyancy.