WASPS, ANTS AND BEES 189 



reared in a large roomy cell, will develop into a queen. The 

 differences between a queen honey-bee and a worker honey-bee, 

 both structural and physiological, are as already pointed out, 

 conspicuous. The influence of a varying food-supply is some- 

 thing mysteriously potent, and this case of the queen bee 

 gives great comfort to those biologists who believe that the 

 external or extrinsic factors surrounding an animal during 

 development have much influence in determining its outcome. 



As there is by immemorial honey-bee tradition but one queen 

 in a community at one time, when new queens issue from the 

 great cells something has to happen. This may be one of three 

 things; either the old and new queens battle to death, and it is 

 believed that in such battles only does a queen bee ever use her 

 sting, or the workers interfere and kill either the old or the new 

 queen by "balling" her (gathering in a tight suffocating mass 

 about her), or either old (usually old) or new queen leaves the 

 hive with a swarm, and a new community is founded. If 

 several new queens are to issue, the workers usually, by thick- 

 ening the outside walls of one or more of the cells, compel the 

 issuing to be successive and not simultaneous. This results 

 in a series of royal battles, or a series of swarmings, or a combi- 

 nation of the two. A queen ready to issue from a cell makes 

 a curious piping audible some yards from the hive, which is 

 answered by a louder piping, or trumpeting, from the old 

 queen. At these times there is great excitement in the hive, 

 as indeed there is during all of the queen-raising season. 



The swarming out, it is apparent, does not break up the old 

 community; in fact only accident, or the successful attacks of 

 such insidious enemies as the bee-moth, and various contagious 

 diseases, break up the parent colony. In this respect is to be 

 noted an important difference between the other social bees 

 and wasps with their communities annually destroyed and 

 refounded, and the honey-bee with its persistent one. Of 

 course workers die and so do drones and queens. The tireless 

 workers which hatch and labor in the spring and summer 

 months rarely live more than six or eight weeks, while the 

 workers born in the late autumn and remaining quietly in the 

 shelter of the hive through the winter live for several months. 



