THE BEE. 345 



life seems to them of no value, when unsupported by this 

 hope, and so they choose to die. The love of offspring 

 appears to he therefore the all moving principle.' The 

 same experiment has been tried by others and always 

 with similar results. 



After the egg of the common working bee is deposit- 

 ed, three days elapses before it assumes the vermicular 

 state. After remaining in this state five days the cell is 

 closed up with a covering of wax. When thus covered 

 and protected, the enibryo insect is not idle, but labors 

 diligently at the distaff, spinning the cocoon. This is a 

 labor of ihirtysix hours. In three days it changes to a 

 nymph and passes six days in this form. And it is not 

 until the twentieth day from the time tlie esg was laid, 

 that it attains the fly state. The progress of the royal 

 worm through the various stages of its infancy is rather 

 more rapid. In sixteen days from the time that the egg 

 was deposited on its princely couch, the perfect state of 

 queen is attained. The male worm or drone is meta- 

 morphosed into a fly on the twentyfourth day after the 

 egg is laid. ' One of the most astonir^hing facts connect- 

 ed with the economy of bees, is the manner in which, 

 when deprived of their queen, they proceed to repair 

 their loss; for this purpose they construct several of these 

 royal cells, and taking a common worker worm out of the 

 common celis, they put it into a royal one, feed the in- 

 sect with royal food, which is more pungent than that 

 destined for worker grubs, and in a few days instead of a 

 worker they have a queen. This extraordinary discov- 

 ery made by Shiruch, has been confirmed by Huber, 

 and is now admitted by all naturalists. In many parts of 

 Germany, and more especially in Sasatia and Saxony, 

 the peasants availing themselves of this discovery, are 

 enabled to multiply their swarms of bees at pleasure; 

 they shut up a few hundred working bees, with a piece 

 of honey comb, containing common grubs, three or four 

 days old ; the worker bees immediately set about de- 

 stroying some of the common cells ; construct royal cells 

 in their state ; deposit the grubs in those cells and ad- 

 minister to them food proper for grubs destined to become 

 queens. This experiment is constantly repeated and 



