Natural History 



charges to a thirteen-day pupation, after which yet another gen- 

 eration of worker bees bite off the roofs of their cradles and join 

 in the busy life of the hive. In larger cells the queen deposits 

 eggs which are not fertilised, and these develop into drones. Still 

 later in the season "royal" cells are constructed, in which the 

 queen lays fertilised eggs, identical with those laid in the ordinary 

 worker cells, but the grubs which hatch out receive a special 

 "royal jelly" from the mouths of their attendants, instead of 

 the usual fare of masticated pollen, and the effect of this 

 diet is to make the grubs develop into "princesses" instead of 

 workers. 



It should be noted that a queen bee receives from a drone 

 in the course of her "nuptial flight" a store of sperm-cells with 

 which she may fertilise the eggs she lays during the next year 

 or more. It depends on the egg-laying movements of the queen 

 whether the laid egg is fertilised or not. 



The Swarm 



Then comes the remarkable upheaval of the busy hive the 

 departure of a "swarm" headed by the queen bee. Whether 

 swarming is due to the overcrowded state of the hive, or to the 

 queen's excitement when her young rivals are stirring in the 

 royal cradles, or to a sudden desire on the part of the workers, 

 a harking back to the time when there were no hives and mother- 

 hood was not given only to one among thousands, a desire to 

 break out of their "prison bounds of order, commendable toil, 

 chill, maidenly propriety," who shall say? But suddenly the 

 routine of the hive is broken through, work is suspended and 

 many of the workers become restless and excited, and gorge them- 

 selves with honey till at a given signal the swarm issues from 

 the hive, "in a tense, direct, vibrating, uninterrupted stream that 

 at once dissolves and melts into space, where the myriad trans- 

 parent furious wings weave a tissue throbbing with sound." 



The mad, joyous dance in the sunlight over, the swarm 



