THE INHABITANTS OF THE HIVE 29 



the scientists; even now after a century of study her 

 growth is as miraculous as ever; and the problems in 

 physiology that lie as yet unsolved in her development 

 will keep many an investigator busy in the future. 



When a colony is queenless, and has young brood 

 or unhatched eggs, it makes haste to develop new 

 queens; not one alone, but several, since it cannot 

 afford to put its "eggs all in one basket." At the 

 height of the honey season, every day that a colony 

 is queenless means two or three thousand less bees 

 than should be present to make it successful in 

 securing the harvest. (Plate V.) 



In developing a queen the bees usually proceed as 

 follows: They select the important egg, which 

 differs in no wise from any other worker egg, and 

 destroying the partitions between its cell and two 

 adjoining cells, give it more room. In order to make 

 the royal apartment of good size a projection is built 

 out over this large cell. This is made of thick wax 

 and ornamented on the outside with hexagonal 

 fretwork, as if it were to be the basis of comb with 

 small cells. It seems as if the hexagonal pattern 

 were in the bee brain and must be expressed, whether 

 it be of any use or not. As soon as the little white 

 larva hatches from the egg, it is fed on the regular 

 larval food. Royal jelly is a food developed in the 

 head glands of the workers; and when it is the 

 fate of a bee larva to develop into a worker, it is fed 

 with this food for three days, and then it is weaned by 

 having other food substituted; but the queen larva 

 is fed with it during her entire development, and there- 



