ORDER HYMENOPTER I. 



177 



animal which can produce either sex at will. Certain worker* 

 Ii.im been known to transform into queen-bees On the other hand, 

 worker bees may in rare cases lay droni i 



The egg from which the queen develops i- like thai of a worker, 

 the difference arising in larval life, owing to a change <>f treat men I 

 of the larva by the nurses, its food, derived from pollen bj digestion,* 

 being different From thai provided for the worker. The firel or old 

 queen, when th< population of the hive becomes excessive, leaves the 

 bive to establish a nev» colony. 'I his is called "swarming." The queen 

 is very fertile, Laving the power of laying between 2000 and 8000 ■ 

 a daj . or " t\\<> eggs per minute for weeks in succession." Cheshire 

 states thai the larva feeds four days, moulting probably six ti 

 and finally, when it stops eating, lines ii< cell with a silken cocoon, 

 though before this can be Bpun a cover or ' is pul over the 



cell by the workers, there being minute openings in the cov< r for the 

 passage of air into the cell. A stroug colony or " stock" may contain 

 as many as 12,000 larva?, all of w bich arc fed by the nurses or workers 

 with pollen and honey. In about a fortnighl from the time ol 

 inn-, the bee bites through the sealing, ami twenty-four hours after 

 drying ami preening itself, enters upon the duties of die hive. 



♦Cheshire Bays: " Tin secretion, commonly, though, a- I hold, 

 erroneously, called 'royal jelly,' i-- added unstintinglj i" the end." 

 The first brood food "is a highly nitrogenous rissui former, derived 

 from pollen by digestion, and having apparently a singular power in 

 developing the generative faculty; for 1 find drone larvae receive 

 much nunc of ii than those "i workers, to whom any accidental ex- 

 possibly gives the power of ovipositing, a- we find it in the 

 abnormal ferule worker." lie thinks also that the queen, if not 

 always, at least during the time of egg laying, is fed by tin- workers 

 from the secretion of the chj le gland (No. 1 . w ith probable additions 

 from some of the other three, there being four kinds of glands, in 

 all, in tlir head and thorax (Cheshire's Be< s ami Bee-keeping, p 



Wasp hanging by one foot.aud eating a fly.— After Em< I 

 15; 



