158 Insect Architecture. 



even to tlie extinction of life, just as the contraction of a Chinese 

 shoe reduces the foot even to uselessness."* We know, on 

 the contrary, that the queen-bee will not deposit eggs in a 

 cell either too small or too large for the proper rearing of 

 the young. In the case of large cells, M. Huber took ad- 

 vantage of a queen that was busy depositing the eggs of 

 workers to remove all the common cells adapted for their 

 reception, and left only the larger cells appropriated for 

 males. As this was done in June, when bees are most 

 active, he expected that they would have immediately re- 

 paired the breaches he had made ; but to his great surprise 

 they did not make the slightest movement for that purpose. 

 In the meanwhile the queen, being oppressed by her eggs, 

 was obliged to drop them about at random, preferring this to 

 depositing them in the male cells, which she knew to be too 

 large. At length she did deposit six eggs in the large cells, 

 which were hatched as usual three days after. The nurse- 

 bees, however, seemed to be aware that they could not be 

 reared there, and though they supplied them with food, did 

 not attend to them regularly. M. Huber found that they 

 had been all removed from the cells during the night, and 

 the business both of laying and nursing was at a complete 

 stand for twelve days, when he supplied them again with a 

 comb of small cells, which the queen almost immediately 

 filled with eggs, and in some cells she laid five or six. 



[The accompanying illustration exhibits these three kinds 

 of bees, namely, the Queen, the Drone, and the Worker, 

 together with the cells which they respectively inhabit. 

 Fig. 1 shows the queen-bee as she appears when in com- 

 mand of a hive. When she first issues from the royal cell, 

 she is much smaller in the body, and an inexperienced 

 observer might have some difficulty in distinguishing her 

 from an ordinary worker. But any one who has been ac- 

 customed to bees can pick her out as soon as his eyes rest 

 upon her. Her body is rather larger and narrower than 

 those of the workers, and the wings are shorter in proportion, 

 slightly crossing at the tips when she is at rest. Fig. 2 



* North American Rev., Oct. 1828. p. 355. 



