The Young Queens 



bee to which it will give birth might 

 almost belong to an entirely different race 

 of insects. 



Four or five years will be the period of 

 her life, instead of the six or seven weeks 

 of the ordinary worker. Her abdomen 

 will be twice as long, her colour more 

 golden, and clearer ; her sting will be 

 curved, and her eyes have seven or eight 

 thousand facets instead of twelve or thir- 

 teen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, 

 but she will possess enormous ovaries, 

 and a special organ besides, the sperma- 

 theca, that will render her almost an 

 hermaphrodite. None of the instincts 

 will be hers that belong to a life of toil ; 

 she will have no brushes, no pockets 

 wherein to secrete the wax, no baskets to 

 gather the pollen. The habits, the pas- 

 sions, that we regard as inherent in the 

 bee, will all be lacking in her. She will 

 not crave for air, or the Hght of the sun ; 



245 



