FIRST SWARM. 



Ihe simultaneous deposition of fifteen hundred to two thousand 

 -drone eggs, and some sixteen or twenty royal eggs, are intimately 

 connected with the approaching social state of the colony. 



133. It was shown by Huber, and since confirmed by other ob- 

 servers, that it is a constant law of bee politics that the first swarm 

 of the season shall be led by the queen-regnant, who therefore ab- 

 dicates her native throne in favour of the colonial sovereignty. This 

 -swarm takes place when the grub proceeding from the first of the 

 eggs deposited by the queen in the royal cells, as above described, 

 has undergone its transformation into a nymph.* The necessity 

 for this law is thus explained by Huber. "Without it, the mutual 

 conflict of the queen-regnant and the princesses, as they would be 

 successively developed, would render the emigration of swarms 

 impossible. For as each princess would issue perfect from the cell, 

 she would be attacked, and forced to engage in combat with the 

 queen, who being, by reason of her age, the stronger and more 

 powerful, would be always victorious. Thus princess after prin- 

 <cess would be destroyed, and none would be forthcoming to 

 take the thrones of the successive emigrating colonies. To pre- 

 vent such a catastrophe, nature has therefore wisely ordered that 

 the queen-regnant, by leading forth the first swarm of the season, 



should remove all cause of danger to the succession of princesses. 



134. "When the emigrant swarm thus first sent forth from the 

 parent hive has established itself, the first care of the workers is to 

 construct combs, consisting of workers' cells. They labour assidu- 

 ously at these, and in accordance with this the queen, who has 

 already deposited in the original hive her full brood of drone 

 eggs, soon begins in her new city to deposit a broocj. of worker 

 eggs ; workers being then the first and most pressing want of the 

 colony. This laying begins as soon as the cells are ready for the 

 deposition of the eggs, and continues for ten or twelve days. 

 About the latter part of this interval, the bees occupy themselves 

 in the construction of the larger class of hexagonal cells for the 

 drone eggs. It would seem as though they knew that her majesty 

 would at this time lay a certain number of such eggs. She 

 accordingly commences laying these, though in far less number 

 than in the great laying, but still sufficient to prepare her people 

 for the succeeding deposition of royal eggs, for which they con 

 struct meanwhile a suitable number of royal cells. 



It rarely happens, at least in the country where Huber made 

 his observations, that the original queen leads forth a swarm from 

 the new hive. The thing nevertheless occasionally occurs, and 

 when it does, it takes place in three or four weeks after the 



* Huber, i. 279. 



F 2 67 



