INSTINCT OF INSECTS^ oil 



(lerful,) that the old instinct was extinguished ; but in 

 the case of the loss of a queen, to which I am next to 

 advert, which is followed by positive operations, the 

 extraordinary development of a new and peculiar in- 

 stinct is indisputable. 



In a hive which no untoward event has deprived of 

 its queen, the workers take no other active steps in the 

 education of her successors — those of which one is to 

 occupy her place when she has flown off at the head of 

 a new swarm in spring — than to prepare a certain 

 number of cells of extraordinary capacity for their re- 

 ception while in the egg, and to feed them when be- 

 come grubs with a peculiar food until they have at- 

 tained maturity. This, therefore, is their ordinary in- 

 stinct ; and it may happen that the workers of a hive 

 may have no necessity for a long series of successive 

 generations to exercise any other. But suppose them 

 to lose their queen. Far from sinking- into that inac- 

 tive despair which was formerly attributed to them, af- 

 ter the commotion which the rapidly-circulated news 

 of their calamity gave birth to has subsided, they be- 

 take themselves with an alacrity from which man when 

 under misfortune might deign to take a lesson, to the 

 active reparation of their loss. Several ordinary cells, 

 as was before related at large % are without delay 

 pulled down, and converted into a variable number of* 

 royal cells capacious enough for the education of one 

 or more queen-grubs selected out of the unhoused 

 working grubs — which in this pressing emergency are 

 mercilessly sacrificed — and fed with the appropriate 

 royal food to maturity. Thus sure of once more ac- 

 • Sec above, p. 130 — . 



