324 ENTOMOLOGY 



Larval Development. When the brood cells are ready, 

 the queen, attended by workers, lays an egg- in each cell and 

 has no further concern as to its fate. After three days the egg 

 discloses a footless grub (Figs. 279, 280) which depends at first 

 upon the milky food that bathes it and has been supplied from 

 the mouths of the worker nurses. Later the larva is weaned 

 by its nurses to pollen, honey and water. As the stomach and 

 the intestine of the larva do not communicate with each other, 

 the excretions of the larva cannot contaminate the surrounding 

 nutriment, and they are retained until the final moult. Five 

 days after hatching, the larva spins its cocoon, the workers 

 having meanwhile covered the larval cell with a porous cap 



FIG. 280. 



Honey bee. f, feeding larva; p, pupa; s, spinning larva. After CHESHIRE. 



of wax and pollen (Fig. 280) and on the twenty-first day after 

 the egg was laid the winged bee cuts its way out, assisted in 

 this operation by the ever-attentive nurses. Now, after acquir- 

 ing the use of its faculties, the newly emerged bee itself 

 assumes the duties of a nurse, but as soon as its cephalic nurs- 

 ing glands are exhausted it becomes a forager. This account 

 applies to the worker; the three kinds of individuals differ in 

 respect to the number of days required for development, as 

 appears in the following table, from Benton : 



Egg. Larva. Pupa. Total. 



Queen, 3 5^ 7 15^ 



Worker, 35 13 21 



Drone, 36 15 24 



The cells in which queens develop (Fig. 279) are quite dif- 

 ferent from worker or drone cells, being much larger, more 



