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.