APIS. 357 



shape five times as large as the drone cells, and are 

 attached laterally to the edges of the comb in a vertical 

 position, with the narrowest part, which is the orifice, 

 hanging downwards. In the forming of these calls the 

 workers are very lavish of their wax, making the coats of 

 them thick and opaque, and they are irregularly rough 

 outside, but within very smoothly polished. Just as 

 the construction of these cells intervenes irregularly with 

 the formation of the cells of the drones, so does the 

 queen intermit at intervals the laying of the drone eggs 

 to deposit occasionally an egg in one of the royal cells, 

 which are not usually completed at the time she com- 

 mences laying them, but are finished afterwards, even 

 during the time the larva is growing. This provision 

 seems to be made for the earliest development of the 

 young queens after the drones come forth, with the pos- 

 sible prevision that the sooner all of these young queens 

 are fertilized that are needful for the requirements of 

 the swarms that the hive may throw off, the sooner will 

 the hive be rid of the incumbrance and the consumption 

 of stores caused by the drones. The transformations of 

 the queens take place more rapidly than the others, for 

 in sixteen days they are completed, of which three are 

 occupied in hatching the egg, and for five they are feeding 

 as larvae, and in that time attain their full growth ; the 

 cell is then closed in with a waxen cover by the workers, 

 and the full-fed larva within is occupied in spinning its 

 cocoon, which it takes twenty-four hours to accomplish. 

 This cocoon is unlike that of the drones and workers, 

 both of which completely enclose the pupa, but the royal 

 larva only forms so much of a cocoon as will cover the 

 head and thorax, arid by which imperfection she un- 

 consciously facilitates her destruction by her rivals in 



