356 BRITISH BEES. 



it becomes inconveniently thronged, especially as spring 

 advances and hot weather sets in. These promptings 

 then urge her to lay drone eggs, for which preparations 

 have already been made by the workers, who have 

 already framed for their reception they being much 

 larger insects larger cells moulded precisely in the same 

 manner, and which are also used occasionally as recep- 

 tacles for honey, and always skirt the bottom of the 

 several combs. This task she has completed in about 

 five days, and it is carried on precisely in the same way 

 as is practised in the case of the neuters ; and they are 

 nurtured by nursing- workers just like them. Of these 

 eggs she lays, as before said, about a thousand, and the 

 workers by some instinctive faculty have framed about 

 such a number of the needful cells. The transforma- 

 tions of the drone occupy about twenty-four or twenty- 

 five days, of which three are passed in the maturing of 

 the egg which then hatches into the larva. This occupies 

 nearly seven days in attaining its full growth, and the 

 remaining portion of the time is spent in its spinning 

 its cocoon, in the same way as the larva of the worker 

 does, and it changes into the imago. To effect all these 

 changes in the transformations of all the sexes, a heat of 

 about seventy degrees is indispensable, but that of the 

 hive in summer is considerably higher. They as well as 

 the workers are assisted to emerge from the cocoon by 

 some of the older workers, who use their mandibles to 

 bite through the enclosure, and who also help to cleanse 

 them from their exuviae. 



Concurrently with the formation of the brood cells of 

 the drones, some of the workers are constructing cells to 

 receive the royal eggs. These cells are totally unlike 

 the other cells of the hive, and are of a sort of pear- 



