New observations on the natural history of bees

It is needless to relate the different methods hitherto employed in forcing bees to yield up a portion of their honey and wax; all resemble each other in being cruel and ill und...

When I had the honour at Genthod of giving you an account of my principal experiments on bees, you desired me to transmit a written detail, that you might consider them with gre...

In my first letter, I remarked, that when queens were prevented from receiving the approaches of the male until the twenty-fifth or thirtieth day of their existence, the result...

A young queen, according to this celebrated naturalist, is always or almost always at the head of a swarm; but he does not assert the fact positively, and had some doubts on the...

M. de Reaumur had not witnessed every thing relative to bees when he composed his history of these industrious animals. Several observers, and those of Lusace in particular, hav...

You desired me to investigate whether the queen is really _oviparous_. M. de Reaumur leaves this question undecided. He observes, that he has never seen the worm hatched; and he...

To preserve greater regularity in continuing the history of swarms, I think it proper to recapitulate in a few words the principal points of the preceding letter, and to expatia...

The singular discovery of M. Riems, concerning the existence of fertile workers, has appeared very doubtful to you, Sir. You have suspected that the eggs ascribed to workers by...

In relating my first observations on queens that lay male eggs alone, I have proved that they lay them in cells of all dimensions indifferently, and even in royal cells. It is a...

I have collected my chief observations on swarms in the two preceding letters; those most frequently repeated, and of which the uniformity of result leads me to apprehend no err...

When you found it necessary, Sir, in the new edition of your works, to give an account of M. Schirach's beautiful experiments on the conversion of common worms into royal ones,...

I have frequently testified my admiration of M. de Reaumur's observations on bees. I feel a sensible pleasure in acknowledging that if I have made any progress in the art of obs...

The facts contained in this volume are deeply interesting to the Naturalist. They not only elucidate the history of those industrious animals, whose nature is the peculiar subje...

All the experiments, related in my preceding letter, were made in 1787 and 1788. They seem to establish two facts, which had previously been the subject of vague conjecture: 1....