166 LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD. 



I will explain to you t how this is brought 

 about. 



In the spring the workers build a few royal 

 cells, in which the queen deposits a small num- 

 ber of eggs. When the oldest royal grub pro- 

 duced from these is ready to be changed into 

 a pupa, the mother queen, collecting around her 

 a large number of workers of different ages, 

 leaves the hive. They generally alight on the 

 branch of a tree, from which they hang in a 

 cluster, clinging to each other's legs as the wax 

 workers do when secreting wax. Some of these 

 clusters or swarms contain as many as forty 

 thousand bees. 



When they are found in this state, a hive is 

 put under them ; they are shaken into it, and 

 there they take up their abode, and form a new 

 family. 



We will now go back to the home they have 

 left, and see what is going on there. The eldest 

 royal grub is now released from her pupa case, 

 and is ready to become a queen. But the 

 workers, instead of acknowledging her as their 

 sovereign, treat her with indifference. She be- 

 comes agitated, and marching about the hive, 



