THE EVOLUTION OF THE BEE AND THE BEEHIVE 



the queen will lay three thousand to four thousand eggs every 

 four and twenty hours, and in the course of her life of four 

 or five years she produces hundreds of thousands of eggs. 

 But should the number of bees in the hive decrease she will 

 cease laying eggs, as there will not then be sufficient workers 

 to attend the resultant larvae. 



As soon as an egg is placed in a cell the worker bees get 

 busy. They push their heads into the cell and seem to do 

 something to the egg, though what it is is not clearly known. 

 Within three or four days a very small white maggot-like 

 grub (Fig. 8) emerges from the eggshell. It has no legs 

 and is devoid of everything we associate with insects — it has 

 no wings, no stings, no feelers, no eyes, and its intestine ends 

 blindly. 



For the first day or two the young larvae are fed from the 

 secretion of the salivary glands of the workers. This is 

 known as pap, or "royal jelly." The larvae not only lap 

 this up, but float in it. On the fourth day this food is mixed 

 with honey, and henceforward the drones are completely 

 weaned and feed entirely on honey and pollen. The queen 

 bee, on the other hand, lives on nothing but royal pap. 

 After about six days the larvae cease to feed. They are 

 then sealed up in their cells (see Fig. 8) by the worker bees 

 and each larva makes a cocoon case, in which it forms a 

 chrysalis or pupa. 



After a few more days the young bee emerges from the 

 cocoon and commences to gnaw her way through the waxen 

 covering of her cell. In this she is aided by numerous work- 

 ers, who hurry up from outside, and as soon as she staggers 

 into the darkness, the heat, and the bustle of the hive, these 

 workers arrange her hair, clean her, and offer her honey to 

 eat. But she has undergone a kind of resurrection and is at 

 first bewildered, trembling and feeble. However, she soon 



[191] 



