130 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 



ment upon a most extraordinary circumstance in their 

 history, which is supported by evidence that seems 

 almost incontrovertible. The fact to which I allude 

 is this — that if the bees are deprived of their queen, 

 and are supplied with comb containing" young worker 

 brood only, they will select one or more to be edu- 

 cated as queens ; which, by having a royal cell erected 

 for their habitation, and being fed with royal jelly for 

 not more than two days, when they emerge from the 

 pupa state (though, if they had remained in the cells 

 which they originally inhabited, they would have turned 

 outworkers) will come forth complete queens, with their 

 form, instincts, and powers of generation entirely dif- 

 ferent. In order to produce this effect, the grub must 

 not be more than three days old; and this is the age at 

 which, according to Schirach, (the first apiarist who 

 called the public attention to this miracle of nature,) 

 the bees usually elect the larvae to be royally educated ; 

 though it appears from Ruber's observations, that a 

 larva two days or even twenty- four hours old will do^. 

 Their mode of proceeding is described to be as follows : 

 — Having chosen a grub, they remove the inhabitants 

 and their food from two of the cells which join that in 

 which it resides ; they next take down the partitions 

 w hich separate these three cells ; and, leaving the bot- 

 toms untouched, raise round the selected worm a cylin- 

 drical tube, which follows the horizontal direction of 

 the other cells : but since at the close of the third day 

 of its life its habitation must assume a different form 

 and direction, they gnaw away the cells below it, and 

 sacrifice without pity the grubs they contain, using the 



^ Iluber, !, 13-7. 



