156 LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD. 



dead, they faithfully watch and guard her body, 

 and will not suffer any one to touch it. 



Jlnna. How strange ! I suppose they do 

 not bury her. 



*ftunt M. No ; but if, at the time of her 

 death, there are no eggs or grubs in the cells, 

 they seem to feel that they have nothing left to 

 live for, and refusing to eat, they die in a few 

 days. But if there are any grubs in the royal 

 cells, they are diverted from their sorrow by 

 their attention to them. They watch them 

 constantly until they are ready to leave their 

 pupa cases, when one of them becomes their 

 queen. 



If there are no royal grubs, they take the 

 grub of a worker, and putting it into a royal 

 cell, or throwing three of the worker cells into 

 one, by knocking down the partitions between 

 them, they feed it upon the kind of food which 

 is commonly given only to the queen grubs, 

 which seems to change its nature, for it grows 

 much larger than an ordinary worker, and in 

 time becomes a queen. 



Sometimes a new queen has been placed in 

 the hive immediately after the death of the old 



