134 THE HUMBLE-BEE vil 
- pratorum workers. On May 26 the queen laid more 
eggs, and the fratorum workers recognised the 
nest, but showed dissatisfaction with the comb, 
and sat apart by themselves. On. June 2 the 
queen still sat on her brood, but the workers con- 
tinued to ignore the brood, and near it had con- 
structed some waxen cells upon which they sat. 
On June ito the workers began to pay attention 
to the lump of brood, to which, it turned out after- 
wards, they had about this time added some eggs, 
but they continued to keep busy with their abortive 
waxen cells, which now numbered eight, and were 
of all sizes, the smallest no larger than egg-cells 
and built on the rims of the largest ones. On 
June 21 two abnormally small ¢errestvis workers 
emerged; they had evidently been half-starved in 
the larval stage, the cocoons having been spun 
many days late. On June 24 two more dwarfed 
workers emerged. On July 3 a pratorum male was 
seen in the nest. On July 13 the nest contained 
eleven undersized fevrestvzs workers, two of the 
original pratorum workers (one of these had died 
or been killed), three pvatorum males, and the 
terrestris queen. The brood was not in a flourish- 
ing condition, for it consisted only of two lots of 
small larvae, but this was no doubt in great measure 
due to the fact that the bees had been kept in con- 
finement the whole time, a period of over seven 
weeks. 
Evidently the company of the pratorum workers 
in the early stages of this nest encouraged the queen 
