Old ideas die hard, as seen here:

New Ideas Concerning the “Queen Bee.”

The annexed interesting communication we clip from the agricultural column of the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. It is evidently written by a practical man and one who is a close observer of nature and accustomed to the manage meat of bees. We always considered the account of the "queen bee" rather poetical than matter of fact; yet very similar accounts are given of some kinds of ants by certain writers. In some works on insects, pictures are given of the “Queen” ant, who is represented as having a body twenty or thirty times as large as that of any of the other members of her community. 

These writers describe her as laying an egg a minute, for days and days together, thus by her individual fecundity populating the anthill. As bee culture has lately been shown to be so remunerative in this State, and as numerous swarms are kept In the San José valley, we suggest to some of our readers in that vicinity that by microscopic and other careful examinations they settle the point hero brought into dispute by the writer of the following: 

I notice an article In the Dollar Newspaper of August 27th, on the subject of bee culture, which I do not consider correct in every respect regarding the queen bee, as Mr. Langstroth calls it. Now I say that it is the king, or male bee. Do not the laws of Nature teach men better than to think that one female should want several hundred males to attend to her? He says that she lays all the eggs, amounting to two or three thousand, In a day. Now that would make a hulk larger than any one bee in the hive. That does not look reasonable. 

Now I contend that the drone is the female instead of the male bee. Mr. Langstroth says that the working bee is an imperfect female bee. I say they are the imperfect male bees. He says if the queen be taken away, that there will be as great a commotion in the hive as in a nation when it loses its reigning female sovereign. The labor of the hive is abandoned for the work of rearing a successor to the insect monarch. I do not believe that they have the power to rear a succession unless there is an egg of a perfectly formed male bee at the time of the king's death, and if there is not one perfect egg, then that swarm is lost, for they cannot breed after his death. 

Mr. Langstroth says that the workers live six or seven months. Now I think they live a great deal longer. If they did not, there would be few bees alive in the spring before they commence breeding, for I do not think they breed in the winter at all, Langstroth says they do not make their wax out of the pollen flowers. I think they do, but I will not argue that point. He says that the building of the comb is carried on in bad weather and at night. Now, I think, whenever they have any wax they put it to its place at once. I never said anything to a man of good sense about the existence of a queen, who did not admit on reflection that It must he a king bee.

Daily Evening Bulletin, 6 Dec. 1856. San Francisco

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