As a rule,
the transformations take place in intervals of three or four days,
corresponding to the lengths of interval at which the crises recur
in intermittent fevers.
So much for the generation of insects. Their death is due to the
shrivelling of their organs, just as the larger animals die of old
age.
Winged insects die in autumn from the shrinking of their wings.
The myops dies from dropsy in the eyes.
21
With regard to the generation of bees different hypotheses are
in vogue. Some affirm that bees neither copulate nor give birth to
young, but that they fetch their young. And some say that they fetch
their young from the flower of the callyntrum; others assert that they
bring them from the flower of the reed, others, from the flower of the
olive. And in respect to the olive theory, it is stated as a proof
that, when the olive harvest is most abundant, the swarms are most
numerous. Others declare that they fetch the brood of the drones
from such things as above mentioned, but that the working bees are
engendered by the rulers of the hive.
Now of these rulers there are two kinds: the better kind is
red in colour, the inferior kind is black and variegated; the ruler is
double the size of the working bee.
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