PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 137 



exactly four days and eight hours making in all the 

 period I have just named. A longer time, by four days, 

 is required to bring the workers to perfection ; their pre- 

 paratory states occupying twenty days, and those of the 

 male even twenty-four. The former consumes half a day 

 more than the queen in spinning its cocoon, a circum- 

 stance most probably occasioned by a singular difference 

 in the structure and dimensions of this envelope, which 

 I shall explain to you presently. Thus you see that the 

 peculiar circumstances which change the form and func- 

 tions of a bee, accelerate its appearance as a perfect in- 

 sect ; and that by choosing a grub three days old, when 

 the bees want a queen, they actually gain six days ; for 

 in this case she is ready to come forth in ten days, in- 

 stead of sixteen, which would be required, was a re- 

 cently laid egg fixed upon a . 



The larvae of bees, though without feet, are not al- 

 together without motion. They advance from their first 

 station at the bottom of the cell, as I before hinted, in a 

 spiral direction. This movement, for the first three 

 days, is so slow as to be scarcely perceptible ; but after 

 this it is more easily discerned. The animal now makes 

 two entire revolutions in about an hour and three quar- 

 ters ; and when the period of its metamorphosis arrives, 

 it is scarcely more than two lines from the mouth of the 

 cell. Its attitude, which is always the same, is a strong- 

 curve b . This occasions the inhabitant of a horizontal 



a Huber, i. 215 . Schirach asserts, that in cold weather the dis- 

 closure of the imago takes place two days later than in warm : and 

 Riem, that in a bad season the eggs will remain in the cells many 

 months without hatching. Schirach, 79. 241. 



b Schirath, t. 3./. 10. 



