40 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



of the body politic. Little wonder is it that the brain 

 of the worker bee*^s much larger than that of the 

 queen or drone, for she needs must exercise her 

 mental powers far more than either. She is obliged 

 also to pass through certain industrial stages in her 

 development as a worker before she attains the full 

 height of citizenship. 



The life-history of a worker is usually as follows: 

 The cell in which she is developed is the smallest of 

 the comb, such as is ordinarily used for storing 

 honey. She is not merely a fatherless creation, like 

 the big drone, but hatches from an impregnated 

 egg during the fourth day after it is laid by the queen 

 mother. She is supplied with royal jelly, presum- 

 ably the same as that which nourishes the queen 

 larva, for about three days; afterward she is fed 

 honey and digested pollen. This food is placed 

 in the bottom of the cell, and the young larva floats 

 in it and absorbs it through the body walls as well as 

 through the mouth, which a little later she opens up 

 pleadingly that it may be filled by the nurse bees. 

 She grows like other infantile insects by shedding 

 her skeleton skin as fast as she outgrows it; she does 

 this with thoroughness, for she sheds the lining of 

 the mouth, the gullet, the larger intestines and the 

 tracheal tubes as well as the outside, this being a 

 very thorough change of clothes, indeed; she does 

 this about six times. Soon after she hatches she 

 querls up in the cell, floating in her food, and at the 

 end of four days' feeding she is a very fat, contented 

 youngster. Six days from the hatching the nurse 



