52 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. I, 



the nurses, does not produce workers but queens. In this case, 

 however, the food is administered in considerable quantity, and is 

 not provided by a single starving mother, as in the case of the 

 ants, but by a host of vigorous and well-fed nurses. Although it 

 has been taken for granted that the fertilized honey-bee becomes 

 a queen as the result of this peculiar diet, the matter appears in a 

 different light when it is considered in connection with von Iher- 

 ing's recent observations on the stingless bees (Meliponidse) 

 of South America (1903). He has shown that in the species of 

 Melipona the cells in which the males, queens, and workers are 

 reared are all of the same size. These cells are provisioned w4th 

 the same kind of food (honey and pollen) and an egg is laid in 

 each of them. Thereupon they are sealed up, and although the 

 larv^ are not fed from day to day as in the honey-bees, but like 

 those of the solitary bees subsist on stored provisions, this uni- 

 form treatment ne\-ertheless results in the production of three 

 sharply differentiated castes. On hatching the c^ueen Melipona 

 has very small ovaries with immature eggs, but in the allied genus 

 Trigona, the species of which dift'er from the Meliponse in con- 

 structing large queen cells and in storing them with a greater 

 quantity of honey and pollen, the queen hatches w4th her ovaries 

 full of ripe eggs. These facts indicate that the large size of the 

 queen cell and its greater store of provisions are merely adapta- 

 tions for accelerating the development of the ovaries. Now on 

 reverting to the hone3-bee we may adopt a similar explanation 

 for the feeding of the queen larva with a special secretion like the 

 "royal jelly." As is well known, the queen honey-bee hatches 

 in about sixteen days from the time the egg is laid, while the work- 

 er, though a smaller insect and possessing imperfect ovaries, re- 

 quires four or five days longer to complete her development. 

 That the special feeding of the queen larva is merely an adapta- 

 tion for accelerating the development of the ovaries is also indi- 

 cated by the fact that this insect is able to lay within ten days 

 from the date of hatching. If this interpretation is correct the 

 qualitative feeding of the queen larva is not primarily a morpho- 

 genic but a growth stimulus. 



5. The grossly mechanical withdrawal by parasites like 

 Orasema of food substances already assimilated b^^ the larva, 

 produces changes of the same kind as those which distin- 

 guish the worker ant from the queen, i. e., microcephaly, microph- 

 thalmy, stenonoty, and aptery. This case is of unusual interest 



