54 



they were quite friendly with their sister workers. As they 

 persistently refused to accept her, and it was now impossible 

 to remove the newcomers, she was removed. 



On December loth a deälated L. fuliginosus female was 

 placed with a single worker from the other L. umbratus nest, 

 who threatened but did not attack her. Three others were then 

 introduced, and only one attacked her for a few moments. 

 Next morning the workers were returned to their nest, and the 

 female put in after them. She was threatened, but not actually 

 attacked at first, though later some workers held her by the 

 legs. She was sUghtly attacked from time to time, and it was 

 very interesting to see how patiently she stroked and caressed 

 her assailants with her antennae. 



After December i6th she was never attacked, and was com- 

 pletely accepted, never being without her court of workers. 

 This queen was accepted by the phlegmatic L. umbratus workers 

 with none of the excitement with which the above-mentioned 

 L. niger colonies received the L. umbratus queens. 



On March 22nd, 1911, a second deälated female was put in 

 the nest, and immediately accepted without any hostility what- 

 ever, and during April two more were just as readily received. 

 These two latter were, however, subsequently removed. In 

 May some strange workers from colonies at Woking and Wel- 

 lington College were put into the nest, and readily received by 

 the workers. They attacked the L. fuliginosus queens from 

 time to time, but finally desisted. The two queens began to 

 lay on May 17th, 1911, for the first time, and the eggs hatched 

 on August 9th. The larvae lived through the winter, and at 

 the moment of writing (July 31st) are nearly full-grown. Their 

 development has been very slow, though the nest has been 

 supplied with abundance of animal food and honey. 



The queens began to lay this year on June 29th, and they 

 have already laid more eggs than during last year. 



Crawley has already demonstrated that females of L. 

 umbratus do not lay until the year after impregnation, and the 

 above experiments show that such is the case with L. fuliginosus. 

 As the females of the latter are only sHghtly larger than the 

 workers, and as their fertihty is delayed for so long a period, 

 we are satisfied that it is clear that the}' are unable to found 



