In a paper which I had the honour to address to the Royal Society about twenty years ago (in the year 1807) upon the Economy of Bees, I stated, that having adapted cavities in hollow trees for the reception of swarms of those insects, I had observed that several days previous to the arrival of a swarm, a considerable number of bees were constantly employed in examining the state of the tree, and particularly of every dead knot above the cavity which appeared likely to admit water into it. At that period it appeared to me rather extraordinary, that animals so industrious as bees, and so much disposed to make the best use of their time, should, at that important season of the year, waste so much of it in apparently useless repetitions of the same act: for I, at that time, supposed that on different days, and at different periods of the same day, I saw only the same individuals. But in a case which at a subsequent period came under my observation, where the cavity into which the bees apparently proposed to enter, was not more than a quarter of a mile distant from the hive whence a swarm were prepared to emigrate, I witnessed a very rapid change of the individuals who visited their future contemplated habitation; and the number which in the course of three days entered it, appeared to me to be fully equal to constitute a very large swarm: and upon the evidence of these and other facts, which I shall proceed to state, I am much disposed to infer, that not a single labouring bee ever emigrates in a swarm without having seen the future proposed habitation of that swarm. That the queen bee has also always seen her future habitation, I am also much inclined to believe, as she is well known to absent herself from the hive some time previously to the emigration of a swarm: though her object may be to meet a male of another hive; for I much doubt whether she ever receives the embraces of a brother. The results of some of Huber’s experiments are very favourable to this conclusion, as is the otherwise excessive number of male bees, and in both the animal and vegetable world nature has taken very ample means of facilitating what the breeders of improved varieties of domesticated animals call cross breeding. I have also been led by the following facts to believe, that not only the future permanent habitation of each swarm, but the place where they temporarily settle, apparently to collect their numbers, soon after they quit their hive, is known also to each individual. Different families of domesticated animals of every species present some peculiarities of disposition and habit; and the swarms of the family of bees, which were the subject of my experiments, showed, I think, more than an ordinary disposition to unite, by two apparently joining the same queen. My attention was consequently attracted to the circumstances which preceded such unions.
Synthetic biology goes live