CLASS INSECT A 293 



food is different for the different types of larvae. Those which will 

 develop into workers are given by the nurse bees undigested honey 

 mixed with digested pollen, and those which will develop into drones are 

 fed undigested honey and undigested pollen. The queen larvae, however, 

 are fed upon a rich albuminous bee milk composed of digested honey 

 and digested pollen, mixed with a glandular secretion, "the whole being 

 known as royal jelly. 



The number of bees in a hive increases rapidly during the spring, 

 since the queen lays from 1000 to 1200 eggs per day and new workers 

 are continually being produced. A few new queens are also developed 

 and a small number of drones. When the number in the hive becomes 

 too great for its capacity, swarming occurs, as a result of which a new 

 society is started elsewhere. If the present swarm is too weak to allow 

 swarming with safety, as rapidly as new queens develop they and the 

 old queen are permitted to have access to one another, whereupon one 

 stings the other to death, since a queen will tolerate no rival in her hive. 

 If, however, the swarm is strong enough, then the worker bees keep the 

 two queens apart and the old queen with a portion of the swarm leaves 

 to establish a new swarm elsewhere, while the new queen becomes the 

 queen of the parent swarm. The new queen soon leaves the hive on her 

 marriage flight, during which she mates with drones. She then returns 

 to the hive, not again to leave it until, perchance, she is in turn forced 

 to lead a new swarm away, resigning her place to a still younger queen. 

 During her marriage flight she receives into the seminal receptacle of 

 her body all of the sperm cells of which she will make use as long as she 

 lives in fertilizing the eggs she lays. A strong swarm will produce many 

 queens; Comstock states that ''one morning we found the lifeless bodies 

 of 15 young queens cast forth from a single hive — a monument to the 

 powers of the surviving Amazon in triumphant possession within." At 

 the close of the season the drones are killed off or driven out by the 

 workers to die, and no new drones are produced until the following spring. 

 If at any time the swarm is without a queen, the workers are able, by 

 proper care and feeding, to develop a new queen from an egg or young 

 larva, which, in the ordinary course of events, would have produced a 

 worker. 



Among wild bees are found a great many different kinds, showing 

 every gradation between those which live a solitary life and those types 

 which approach the honeybee in the degree of specialization and the 

 variety of activities carried on. Among bees which lead a solitary life 

 there is no distinction between queen and worker, since the queen herself 

 provisions the cells in which she lays her eggs. In the case of bumblebees 

 only the females live through the winter, and in the spring each queen 

 bumblebee has to select a place for her nest, lay her eggs, feed the young, 

 and thus develop a society before she can assume the prerogatives of a 



