CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



the eggs of worker-bees alone. At the end of the 

 time mentioned, a considerable laying of the eggs 

 of drones commences ; and soon after the appear- 

 ance of these, the workers of the hive, with a 

 strange instinct, begin to prepare royal cells for 

 the queen-eggs that are certain to follow. Alto- 

 gether, the fruitfulness of the female bee is amaz- 

 ing, from ico to 200 eggs a day being the usual 

 amount of her produce : 100,000 is said to be no 

 very uncommon number of young for her to give 

 origin to in a single season. A swarm consisting 

 of 2000 or 3000 in the beginning of the year will 

 throw off in June swarms amounting to 40,000 or 

 50,000 ; in many cases the first swarm, and in 

 some the cast or second swarm, throw off colonies 

 of 10,000 or 12,000 ; and yet the original stock is 

 left augmented to the number of 18,000 or 20,000. 

 Occasionally, an early and numerous first swarm 

 casts even twice. 



Transformation of Worker-bees. 



A fertilised queen is so impatient to begin her 

 laying of worker-eggs, that in a new hive, she only 

 waits till a few inches of comb are erected. Be- 

 fore depositing the egg, she carefully examines 

 the cell, and if satisfied, turns and drops into it 

 from the oviduct an egg of an oval shape and 

 bluish-white tint. Here the egg remains for three 

 days, attached by a viscous fluid to the corner of 

 the cell ; and, on the fourth, the thin outer shell 

 of the egg bursts, exposing a small lively worm. 

 Now come into play the nurses, or nursing-bees, 

 one of the two great sections into which Huber 

 and others consider the labourers of the hive to 

 be divided. The other class are the wax-workers. 

 Both elaborate honey, but the latter class alone 

 make wax and form combs. Again, the nurses, 

 whose figure may be distinguished from its being 

 more ovoidal than the others, are those who alone 

 take care of the young. As soon as the egg is 

 hatched, they watch over the larva or worm with 

 the tenderest and most incessant care, adminis- 

 tering copious supplies of mixed pollen, honey, 

 and water, which the nursling devours with avidity. 

 Like other larvae, it soon grows so as to cast its 

 cuticle ; and, five days after chipping the shell, it 

 has become large enough to fill the cell, lying 

 coiled up like a ring. It now ceases to eat, and 

 the bees seal up the cell with wax. Left to 

 itself, the larva begins the process of spinning a 

 cocoon round its body, which it does in thirty-six 

 hours, the material being a fine silken thread 

 from the mouth of the spinner. In three days 

 more, it is converted into the state of pupa, or 

 chrysalis, when all the parts of the future bee 

 become gradually visible through the transparent 

 covering, assuming a darker hue day by day, and 

 progressing to the state of the complete imago, or 

 insect. On the twentieth day from the deposition 

 of the egg, the young bee begins to cut through 

 its prison-door with its mandibles, and in half an 

 hour makes its escape. The bees immediately 

 clean out the vacated cell, and prepare it again 

 for eggs or honey, leaving the silk cocoon adher- 

 ing to the walls. Old writers say that the elder 

 bees fondly caress and feed the new-comer ; but 

 later observers, of no mean authority, declare that, 

 on the contrary, they seem to think their duty 

 ended with the closing up of the cell, and leave 

 the young stranger to shift for itself in the busy 

 world upon which it has entered. 



678 



Male Eggs Royal Eggs. 



The passage of male eggs through the larva 

 and pupa state is attended with the very same 

 phenomena as in the case of the eggs of workers, 

 with the exception that the process occupies a 

 little more time, twenty-four days in all being 

 spent in the change. The cause of male eggs 

 being laid, in ordinary circumstances, only after 

 eleven months have been passed in the laying of 

 worker-eggs, was explained by Huber. He con- 

 ceived eleven months to be necessary to perfect the 

 male eggs, and was of opinion that the arrange- 

 ment of the eggs in the ovaries was such as to 

 permit, and even compel, the retention of both 

 male and royal eggs until they were fully matured. 

 This idea seems to be confirmed by the ordinary 

 course of things in the hive, but certain anomalous 

 facts startlingly contravene it. Huber himself 

 found that if a young queen had not the oppor- 

 tunity of proving fertile within twenty days of her 

 birth, all her after product consisted of. drones, and 

 drones alone ; and what is still more curious, he 

 discovered that she began to produce these drones 

 at the time when she should have laid worker-eggs 

 namely, within forty-six. hours after fecundation. 

 The gestation of eleven months seemed totally 

 unnecessary in such cases of retarded fecundation. 

 Huber confessed himself incapable of explaining 

 this remarkable circumstance Though we do not 

 understand it, however, it only tends to make us 

 marvel more and more at the perfection of order 

 in the bee economy. The queen bee is never 

 voluntarily guilty of that breach of the laws of her 

 being, which produces such remarkable effects ; 

 and, if artificially confined till she is twenty days 

 old, her violent agitation shews her instinctive 

 sense of the departure from the order of nature. 



The raising of workers and drones from the egg 

 to the insect state is a simple matter, in compari- 

 son with the same transition in the case of queen- 

 bees. The royal eggs, which the queen begins to 

 lay twenty days after she has commenced the 

 deposition of male ones, differ in no respect from 

 common eggs. But on the royal larva, when it 

 breaks from its three days' confinement in the 

 shell, the nurses bestow peculiar attentions. They 

 watch it incessantly, and feed it with a rich jelly, 

 slightly acidulous, and given in such quantities 

 that the royal cell is usually wet with it. In five 

 days, the young majesty of the hive has grown so 

 as to be able to spin her web, and the bees wax 

 up the cell. The cocoon is spun in twenty-four 

 hours ; two days and a half of inactivity follow ; 

 the larva is then transformed into a pupa or 

 nymph; and after other four or five days have 

 passed, the royal insect is complete the whole 

 time occupied in the metamorphosis being about 

 sixteen days. 



)Ut 



:lls 

 tey 



Young Queens. 



Young queens do not issue from their cells 

 when perfect, like workers and drones. They 

 are not permitted, unless the old queen has 

 quitted the hive with a swarm, or the seat of 

 royalty is in any other way vacated. The bees 

 therefore close the royal cells more firmly, leaving 

 only a small aperture to introduce food ; and, 

 acting as if aware that they may need a queen in 

 case of swarming, they at such times will not 

 permit the old queen to approach the cells. Her 



