ig 
QUEENS INACTIVE. 
The kelep queens, even when young, are distinctly less active than 
the workers. Isolated queens have shown no. ability or inclination 
to excavate nests and very little interest in eggs or larvee which have 
been intrusted to them. 
It does not appear that the keleps have the art of regurgitating 
food for their larve or for each other, but they have, instead, the 
curious habit of opening their mandibles wide and lapping up drops 
of nectar, moistened sugar, or honey on their mouth parts. The 
liquid is thus carried into the nest and dispensed to the other members 
of the community, old and young. The queen is regularly fed in this 
way, though in a few instances the queens of captive colonies came 
to the surface to eat sugar with the workers. 
In the true ants the young queen bites off her wings.? excavates her 
own burrow. and cares for her first brood of eggs after having 
laid them, and appears not to be deficient in intelligence and activity 
in comparison with the workers. The demeanor of the kelep queens 
snside the nests differed notably from those of a species of Formica 
kept in the laboratory at Victoria, Tex., for purposes of comparison. 
The kelep queen is the last to notice any disturbance of conditions, 
such as the admission of light, but the Formica queens were even 
more nervous and irritable than their workers and were the first to 
run for shelter. The same was true of them when their nest was 
being dug out. . 
The only instances in which the kelep queens have shown any note- 
worthy activity have occurred when they were condenmned to sohtary 
confinement. As though realizing the uselessness of such an existence 
these queens often make reckless attempts at escape and run rapidly 
away, in complete contrast to their usual quiet and sluggish demeanor 
when associated with workers and eggs or young. Tn nature, or rather 
in the Guatemalan cotton fields, this activity on the part of a queen 
which had for any reason lost her family might be of advantage in 
enabling her to find a home with some other colony. Strange queens 
seem always to be welcomed when introduced into a new community 
with or without a queen of its own.” The removal of the queen, on 
the other hand, does not seem to have any effect upon the actions of 
the workers as long as there are eggs and larve to care for, but 
workers alone become utterly listless and stand idly about with their 
a'This was observed in Texas by Mr. Frederick L. Lewton in a young queen 
of Cremastogaster leviuscula Mayr. 
bIn one colony studied by Mrs. Cook two strange queens, while not actually 
bitten, were dragged about in an unfriendly manner and did not long survive. 
298929—No. 10—05 M 
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