324 ENTOMOLOGY 
Larval Development.—\Vhen the brood cells are ready, 
the queen, attended by workers, lays an egg in each cell and 
has no further concern as to its fate. After three days the egg 
discloses a footless grub ( Figs. 279, 280) which depends at first 
upon the milky food that bathes it and has been supplied from 
the mouths of the worker nurses. Later the larva is weaned 
by its nurses to pollen, honey and water. As the stomach and 
the intestine of the larva do not communicate with each other, 
the excretions of the larva cannot contaminate the surrounding 
nutriment, and they are retained until the final moult. Five 
days after hatching, the larva spins its cocoon, the workers 
having meanwhile covered the larval cell with a porous cap 
RY uly t ile 14 
Honey bee. f, feeding larva; p, pupa; s, spinning larva.—After CHESHIRE. 
of wax and pollen (Fig. 280) and on the twenty-first day after 
the egg was laid the winged bee cuts its way out, assisted in 
this operation by the ever-attentive nurses. Now, after acquir- 
ing the use of its faculties, the newly emerged bee itself 
assumes the duties of a nurse, but as soon as its cephalic nurs- 
ing glands are exhausted it becomes a forager. ‘This account 
applies to the worker; the three kinds of individuals differ in 
respect to the number of days required for development, as 
appears in the following table, from Benton: 
Egg. Larva. Pupa. Total. 
Queen, 3 5% 7 15/2 
Worker, 3 5 13 21 
Drone, 3 6 15 24 
The cells in which queens develop (Fig. 279) are quite dif- 
ferent from worker or drone cells, being much larger, more 
