34*2 THE BEEr 



the working bees will by no means suffer. They seem 

 sensible thai two young ones, stuffed up in the same cell, 

 when they grew larger would but embarrass and at last 

 destroy each other. They therefore take care to leave a 

 cell to every egg, and remove or destroy the rest. 



The single egg that is left remaining, is fixed to the 

 bottom of the cell, and touches it but in a single point, 

 A day or two after it is deposited, the worm is excluded 

 from the shell of the egg, having the appearance of a 

 maggot rolled up in a ring, and lying softly on a bed of 

 whitish colored jelly, upon which also the little animal 

 begins to feed. In the meantime, the instant it appears, 

 the working bees attend it with the most anxious and 

 paternal tenderness. They furnish it every hour with a 

 supply of this white substance, on which it feeds and 

 lies, and watch the cell with unremitted care. They are 

 nurses that have greater affection for the offspring of 

 others, than many parents have for their own children. 

 They are constant in visiting each cell, and seeing that 

 nothing is wanting; pre[)aring the white mixtin-e, which 

 is nothing but a composition of honey and wax, in their 

 own bowels, with which they feed them, thus attended 

 and plentifully fed, the worm in less than six days' time 

 comes to its fill growth, and no longer accepts the food 

 offered it. When the bees perceive that it has no further 

 occasion for feeding, they perform the last offices of ten- 

 derness, shut the little animal up in the cell, walling up 

 the mouth of its apartment with wax; there they leave 

 the worm to itself having secured it from every external 

 injury. 



The worm is no sooner left enclosed but from a state of 

 inaction it begins to labor, extending and shortening its 

 body and by this means liiiin.i? the walls of its apartment 

 with a silken tapestry which it spins in the manner of 

 caterpillars before they underiro their last transformation. 



When their cell is thus prepared, the animal is soon 

 after transformed into an aurelia: but differing from that 

 of the common caterpillar, as it exhibits not only the legs, 

 but the wincrs of the future bee, in its present state of in- 

 activity. Thus, in about twenty or one and twenty days 

 after the egg was laid, the bee is completely formed, and 



