258 THE HUMBLE-BEE x 
it home a worker from one of my ¢errestris nests 
settled on it and began incubating it. 
On July 22, about 9 p.M., I saw the vesta/zs queen 
occasionally paying attention to two empty egg-cells. 
Possibly these had contained workers’ eggs, for at 
another time I saw her quietly eating the eggs in 
another cell. Sometimes she worked at one cell, 
sometimes at the other. Soon she became busier 
and began to work pretty continuously at one of the 
cells, adding wax to it. At 9.54 she commenced 
laying eggs in this cell without having previously 
worked herself up into any excitement, putting the 
tip of her abdomen into the cell and clasping the 
latter with her hind feet just like a Lombus queen. 
She kept the tip of her abdomen in the cell for 
about two minutes, and her sting appeared through 
the wall of the cell several times. During the first 
minute not a worker approached, but during the 
second minute she was continually harassed by a 
worker trying to bite down the wall of the cell from 
behind. She now kept trying, but without much 
effect, to beat the worker’s head down with her hind 
feet, which, owing to the incurvature of the abdomen, 
extend farther beyond it than in Bomdus. The 
worker, however, did not excite or hurry her, and, 
in fact, did no material damage to the cell. When 
she had finished I saw several eggs in the cell ; they 
must therefore have been laid very quickly. She 
immediately sealed up the cell and then began 
polishing the surface of it with her jaws. She main- 
tained this polishing work, almost without ceasing, 
