The drones, or male bees, appear to receive life for one substantial purpose only, which is soon accomplished, but during the short space of time its successive performance requires, it is incidentally accompanied with assistance to the general community whilst they remain permitted occupants of the hive, by aiding in heating and ventilating it,—a labour repaid by the food, which they obtain from the stores kept open for daily consumption. Although uncontributive to the acquisition of the riches of the hive, yet are they indispensable to the perpetuation of the species, and their murder as supposed by some apiarians, or their expulsion as thought by others, in either case equally terminating in their destruction, seems an unworthy return for the important service performed, although this is restricted to the number of individuals required by the equal number of queens that may be produced. To this number their production might be limited, but for the chance of either or all of these queens failing by some casualty to obtain a prince consort. To baffle the possibility of this mischance, a very superfluous number of these drones is hatched, as above stated, which are on the alert, when each queen successively issues forth upon her bridal morn, to catch her favouring glances, and be the accepted groom. That they are not further conducive to the well-being of the hive is the fault of their structure and of their instinct, which are correlative, they being as little fitted either in their tongue or their legs for the uses of the hive as the queen herself. The physiology of their intercourse is a mystery of mysteries, and would seem to partake of the principle, modified, of that developed in the aphides, where the vital power passes on through successive generations by the efficiency of the energy of one ancestral intercourse. In the hive bee this is not the case, but in these the one espousal fertilizes eggs to the number of often a hundred thousand, yet undeveloped and even indiscernible by the aid of the microscope in the ovaries of the queen, and which become bees progressively in the course of a couple of years, the supposed duration of her existence, during the whole of which time she is laying. The accepted male is destroyed by the effects of the amour, and when all the queens which are to be the heads of independent communities are successively fertilized, and have led forth their colonies, the remaining drones issue compulsively from the hive and are lost in the wideness of nature, and die by the natural limitation of their existence, or become the prey of their numerous enemies.