578 Insects. 



the workers. In two or three days the eggs are hatched, 

 when the Neuters nurse the young grubs, whom they 

 feed most tenderly with bee-bread and honey. After 

 twenty-one days, the young Bees are able to form cells 

 with such indefatigable activity that they will then do 

 more in one week than during all the rest of the year. 

 No more than one Queen is ever permitted to inhabit a 

 hive. When a young Queen is about to be hatched, the 

 old one leads away a swarm from the old colony to form 

 a new one. If the Queen die or is lost to the hive by 

 accident, and there be no young Queens in the royal cells, 

 the Bees can repair their loss. They choose a grub of 

 the Neuter species, enlarge its cell by adding to it three 

 or four adjacent ones, feed the young grub on royal food, 

 and it is then developed into a Queen. Sometimes there 

 are Bees who, less laborious than the others, support 

 themselves by pillaging the hives of the rest; upon 

 which a battle ensues between the industrious and the 

 despoiling insects. Their foes are the wasp, the hornet, 

 and various kinds of birds. 



The Bee collects the honey by means of its proboscis, 

 or trunk, which is a most astonishing piece of mecha- 

 nism, consisting of more than twenty parts. Entering the 

 hive, the insect disgorges the honey into cells, for winter 

 subsistence ; or else presents it to the labouring Bees. 



The combs of cells formed by these industrious in- 

 sects are constructed with an instinctive ingenuity which 

 must always be regarded as one of the most marvellous 

 things in nature. Each comb consists of two sets of 

 hexagonal cells placed back to back, and not only do 

 the insects adopt this form which enables them to con- 

 struct the greatest number of cells of the requisite 

 size within the smallest possible space, and with the 

 least possible amount of material, but each cell on one 

 side of the comb is placed opposite to the junction of 

 three cells on the opposite side, so that its centre may 

 be deepened without interfering with the latter, the 

 three diamond-shaped pieces forming the bottom of each 

 cell belonging to three distinct cells of the opposite sido 

 of the comb. By all these contrivances the Bees manage- 

 to get the greatest possible amount of accommodation in 



