286 



INSECT MISCELLANIES, 



Swarm of bees on a laburnum tree branch. 



What is better ascertained with respect to the 

 original formation of swarms is, that in a populous 

 hive, containing a fertile queen, a prodigious quantity 

 of the eggs of male bees are laid in the course of 

 May, and at the same time royal cells are constructed 

 by the workers, to the number of from sixteen to 

 twenty-seven, but the queen lays only a single egg- 

 in one of these on the same day, as it is important 

 that no two queens should be of the same age. When 

 the grubs hatched in the royal cells are ready to be 

 transformed into pupa?, the mother-queen leaves the 

 hive, together with a large number of the workers of 

 all ages, the original hive remaining without a queen 

 till the transformation of the eldest royal pupa. All 



