SOME STRANGE MARRIAGE-CUSTOMS 293 



vestment wherein to undergo its transformation into a 

 worker-bee. The careful mother, during this period 

 of transition, now scrapes away an opening through which 

 the young bees may creep when they awake. This event 

 takes place in the course of a few days, when her work 

 is materially lightened, for these newly-hatched workers 

 at once take over the duties of building nurseries and 

 feeding the further batches of young which, for a time, 

 follow one another in quick succession. The queen, 

 indeed, has now nothing else to do but to lay eggs in the 

 nurseries as they are ready. So far all the children born to 

 her are daughters. The earliest-born, it is to be noted, 

 were " workers " ; those which follow and are tended 

 by the workers are also females, and supplement their 

 mother's labours by producing fertile eggs, though they 

 have never even seen the male of their own species. Thus, 

 if the queen-mother die her virgin daughters carry on the 

 colony. But it sometimes happens that she may have 

 left no descendants capable, for the time, of laying fertile 

 eggs. In this case, if there be larvas still in the nursery, 

 the workers feed them assiduously as if in the hope that 

 some may prove fertile. But if there be no infants to be 

 fed they apparently abandon work, become despondent, 

 and spend the greater part of their time sitting at home 

 by the empty cradles, till at last death comes to their 

 rescue and the colony is extinct. 



Much that baffles one in the history of the Hive-bee 

 becomes clear in the light of the facts revealed by the 

 life-story of the Bumble-bee. In the first place it will 

 be remembered her first eggs produced only workers, which 

 appeared at a time when her energies were severely 

 strained, and their food allowance was no more than 

 barely sufficient to sustain life. The females which 



