ORDER HYMENOPTERA. 177 



animal which can produce either sex at will. Certain worker-eggs 

 have been known to transform into queen-bees. On the other hand, 

 worker-bees may in rare cases lay drone-eggs. 



The egg from which the queen develops is like that of a worker, 

 the difference arising in larval life, owing to a change of treatment 

 of the larva by the nurses, its food, derived from pollen by digestion,* 

 being different from that provided for the worker. The first or old 

 queen, when the population of the hive becomes excessive, leaves the 

 hive to establish a new colony. This is called "swarming." The queen 

 is very fertile, having the power of laying between 2000 and 3000 eggs 

 a day, or "two eggs per minute for weeks in succession." " Cheshire 

 states that the larva feeds four days, moulting probably six times; 

 and finally, when it stops eating, lines its cell with a silken cocoon, 

 though before this can be spun a cover or "sealing" is put over the 

 cell by the workers, there being minute openings in the cover for the 

 passage of air into the cell. A strong colony or "stock" may contain 

 as many as 12,000 larvse, all of which are fed by the nurses or workers 

 with pollen and honey. In about a fortnight from the time of seal- 

 ing, the bee bites through the sealing, and twenty-four hours after 

 drying and preening itself, enters upon the duties of the hive. 



* Cheshire says: "The secretion, commonly, though, as I hold, 

 erroneously, called 'royal jelly,' is added unstintingly to the end." 

 The first brood food "is a highly nitrogenous tissue-former, derived 

 from pollen by digestion, and having apparently a singular power in 

 developing the generative faculty; for I find drone larvae receive 

 much more of it than those of workers, to whom any accidental ex- 

 cess possibly gives the power of ovipositing, as we find it in the 

 abnormal fertile worker." He thinks also that the queen, if not 

 always, at least during the time of egg-laying, is fed by the workers 

 from the secretion of the chyle-glaud"(No. 1 ), with probable additions 

 from some of the other three, there being four kinds of glands, in 

 all, in the head and thorax. (Cheshire's Bees and Bee-keeping, p. 82.) 



Wasp hanging by one foot, and eating a fly. After Emerton. 

 13 



