MUTUAL AID AND COMMUNAL LIFE 



435 



as white, soft, footless, helpless, grubs. They are fed by 

 certain worker bees called nurses (workers which have not 

 yet learned to go out and gather pollen and honey) , at first 

 on a highly nutritious substance called bee- jelly, which the 

 nurses make in their stomachs and regurgitate. After two 

 or three days of bee- jelly diet they are given pollen and 

 honey. A few days later a small mass of this new food 

 is put into each cell, which is then "capped" or covered 

 with wax. The larvae after eating what is stored in their 





m * 



FIG. 223. Worker brood and queen-cells of honeybee; beginning at the 

 upper right end of cells and going to the left is a series of egg, young 

 larvae, old larvae, pupa, and adult ready to issue; the large curving 

 cells below are queen-cells. (After Benton.) 



cell change into pupae and lie quiescent for thirteen days 

 when they become fully developed bees. They now gnaw 

 the caps away and come out into the hive ready to work. 



Such is the life-history of the worker bee. It has been 

 demonstrated that the eggs which produce workers and 

 those which produce queens do not differ, but that if the 

 workers desire to have a queen they tear down two or three 

 cells around some one cell, enlarging it into a vase-shaped 

 cavity (fig. 223). The larva that hatches in this large cell 

 is fed for its whole larval life with rich bee-jelly. From its 



