xxvi INSECTA : HYMENOPTERA 409 



this view, even in the case of bees, may have to be recon- 

 sidered in the light of Von Ihering's observations on the 

 stingless bee of South America. 1 



The When the new young queens and the males are 



Marriage fully developed, they become restless and try to 

 Flight. leave the nest, but are restrained, it is said, by 

 the workers, until one specially favourable day when they 

 all queens, males, and workers come up to the surface, and 

 the winged forms climb up the grass stalks, so as to be able 

 to spread their wings, and then away they fly, rising higher 

 and higher until lost to sight. All colonies in the same 

 neighbourhood are said to send out their winged forms on 

 the same day, and they mingle in the air, so that mating 

 takes place amongst members of different families. 



The males do not long survive the marriage flight, and do 

 not return to an underground life at all, but the fertilised 

 queens are now only just beginning their careers. Occasion- 

 ally, after the marriage flight, a queen may alight near her 

 old home and be led back into it by her nurses. More 

 usually she falls to earth to find herself quite alone, and alone 

 she founds a fresh colony. 



The The solitary queen first commences action by 



Founding pulling off her wings, for which she has no further 

 of a Nest. use g ne then excavates in the earth a small 

 single burrow with an enlarged chamber at the end, and 

 closes up the open end. In this hidden retreat she rests for 

 some weeks, until her eggs are mature, when she lays a little 

 batch of them. When the grubs hatch out, she tends them 

 herself, and feeds them on her own saliva. Fed with this 

 food only, they develop slowly, and finally pupate and produce 

 little undersized workers. It may have taken seven or eight 

 months for the queen to produce and bring up her first small 

 family, and all this time, whilst their whole upbringing 

 depends on her, she takes no food whatever, nourishing both 

 herself and them on the now superfluous substance forming 

 her wing muscles, and on the fat of her own body, which she 

 accumulated during the time when she was a young princess 

 in the old nest, fed assiduously by her nurses. 



Soon, however, she is once more to be cared for herself, 

 for before long the new young workers make their way out 

 1 Quoted in Wheeler's Ants, p. 105. 



