AFFKCTION FOR THE YOUNG. 529 



During this time the true stomach receives no honey for digestion, but 

 we invariably find in it a crumbly mass called bee bread, consisting 

 of pollen, which constitutes the true food of the bees, and which alone 

 is given to the larvae as food. This mass of pollen does not appear to 

 be received through the canal of the proboscis, but through the true 

 aperture of the oesophagus. As soon as the colder season interrupts the 

 collecting of honey the bees gradually become more inactive, when a few 

 alone loiter about the entrance of the hive, whereas the majority are 

 preparing for their hibernation within. They then so constrict the 

 opening that one bee only can pass through at a time, they cling 

 together in the hive, and appear to have lost much of their former 

 vivacity ; but they do not become absolutely torpid, but feed tem- 

 perately upon the honey collected in the summer. 



During this whole time the queen reposes quietly in the nest, enjoy- 

 ing the respect shown to her by the neuters. As soon as some of the 

 small cells are completed for the workers she commences laying her 

 eggs, impregnated by the preceding year's pairing, notwithstanding 

 having previously laid many in the old hive ; or if she be a young queen 

 she will have been impregnated by the drones of the old hive prior to 

 her quitting. In the course of three days after laying the egg the 

 young larva is disclosed, which is full grown in five days more ; the 

 larvae then close the cells themselves, in three days more they become 

 pupae, and in the course of seven days and a half the perfect bee 

 comes forth, thus its development is completed in the twentieth day 

 after the laying of the egg. A great number of workers being thus 

 born, the queen begins to lay male eggs in the larger cells, and from 

 three to four female ones in the royal cell. When the old queen has 

 laid all her eggs she dies, and the hive is without a head until the 

 young royal larvae are developed. This the bees bear very quietly, 

 whereas the loss of the queen without the survivance of a royal progeny 

 produces the total dissolution of the society. But if the young royal mag- 

 gots are developed whilst the old queen still lives she kills them, which the 

 neuters freely allow ; it will therefore sometimes happen that a swarm, 

 after the female has laid all her eggs, is without a royal successor. 

 This evil it is said the neuters remove by transferring a one-day old 

 maggot from the cells of the neuters to the royal cell, where they rear 

 it with superior food, whence a queen is developed. The correctness 

 of this assertion, which is however supported by many direct observa- 

 tions, has been doubted, and Treviranus has endeavoured to deny it, 



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