the offspring of the royal brood is
animated: for this is easy to be seen; because at the very end of the
wax-works there appears, as it were, a thimble-like process (somewhat
similar to an acorn,) rising higher, and having a wider cavity, than the
rest of the holes, wherein the young bees of vulgar note are contained."

Hyginus, who flourished before Columella, had evidently noticed the
royal jelly; for he speaks of cells larger than those of the common
bees, "filled as it were with a solid substance of a _red color_, out of
which the winged king is at first formed." This ancient observer must
undoubtedly have seen the quince-like jelly, a portion of which is
always found at the base of the royal cells, after the queens have
emerged. The ancients generally called the queen a king, although
Aristotle says that some in his time called her the mother. Swammerdam
was the first to prove by dissection that the queen is a perfect female,
and the only one in the hive, and that the drone is the male.

For reasons which I shall shortly mention, the ancient methods of
artificial increase appear to have met with but small success. Towards
the close of the last century, a new impulse was given to the artificial
production of swarms, by the discovery of Schirach, a German clergyman,
that bees are able to rear a queen from worker-brood. For want, however,
of a more thorough knowledge of some important principles in the economy
of the bee, these efforts met with slender encouragement.

Huber, after his splendid discoveries in the physiology of the bee,
perceived at once, the importance of multiplying colonies by some method
more reliable than that of natural swarming. His leaf or book hive
consisted of 12 frames, each an inch and a half in width; any one of
which could be opened at pleasure. He recommends forming artificial
swarms, by dividing one of these hives into two parts; adding to each
part six empty frames. After using a Huber hive for a number of years, I
became perfectly convinced that it could only be made servicable, by an
adroit, experienced and fearless Apiarian. The bees fasten the frames in
such a manner, with their propolis, that they cannot, except with
extreme care, be opened without jarring the bees, and exciting their
anger; nor can they be shut without constant danger of crushing them.
Huber nowhere speaks of having multiplied colonies extensively by such
hives, and although they have been in use more than sixt