INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 503 



tion in the important business of feeding the young 

 brood. One teaches them to swallow poUen, not to 

 satisfy the calls of hunger, but that it may undergo in 

 their stomach an elaboration fitting it for the food of 

 the grubs ; and another to regurgitate it when duly 

 concocted, and to administer it to their charge, propor- 

 tioning the supply to the age and condition of the reci- 

 pients. A third informs them when the young grubs 

 have attained their full growth, and directs them to 

 cover their cells with a waxen lid, convex in the male 

 cells, but nearly flat in those of workers ; and by a 

 fourth, as soon as the young bees have burst into day, 

 they are impelled to clean out the deserted tenements 

 and to make them ready for new occupants. 



Numerous as are the instincts I have already enu- 

 mei'ated, the list must yet include those connected with 

 that mysterious principle which binds the working bees 

 of a hive to their queen : — the singular imprisonment in 

 which they retain the young queens that are to lead oflF 

 a swarm, until their wings be sufficiently expanded to 

 enable them to fly the moment they are at liberty, gradu- 

 ally paring away the waxen wall that confines them to 

 their cell to an extreme thinness, and only suffering it 

 to be broken down at the precise moment required; — the 

 attention with which, in these circumstances, they feed 

 the imprisoned queen by frequently putting honey upon 

 her proboscis, protruded from a small orifice in the lid 

 of her cell ; — the watchfulness with which, when at the 

 period of swarming more queens than one are required, 

 they place a guard over the cells of those undisclosed, 

 to preserve them from the jealous fury of their excluded 

 rivals ; — the exquisite calculation with which they in- 



