34 THE HUMBLE-BEE 11 
comb, The interstices between the tops of the 
cocoons are filled with wax, the surface of which 
is beautifully polished, making the groove in which 
the queen sits smooth and comfortable. 
Four or five weeks of labour have told heavily 
upon the queen; the tips of her wings have become 
torn and tattered, and when she goes out to gather 
food she works less energetically than formerly, 
often stopping to rest on the leaf of a tree or on a 
blade of grass. As soon as she finds that her 
children are able to collect sufficient honey and 
pollen for the maintenance of the little family, she 
relinquishes this labour, and henceforth devotes 
herself entirely to indoor duties, laying eggs in 
increasing numbers and assisting the workers to 
incubate and feed the brood. Sometimes, however, 
the workers of the first batch are not sufficiently 
large or numerous to support the colony. In this 
case the queen continues going out to work until 
more workers appear. 
A queen of a prolific species like /apzdarius or 
terrestris during her most productive period lays a 
batch of eggs, on an average, daily. 
The queen builds the special cell of wax to 
receive her eggs upon a cluster of cocoons, gener- 
ally forming it in a crevice where two or three 
cocoons meet. I have, however, known a very 
prolific dapzdarius queen to construct an egg-cell 
on a wax-covered cluster of nearly full-grown larve. 
It is very interesting to watch a /apzdarius queen 
lay a batch of eggs. An hour or two previously 
