* 962 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
In the first instance, as far as concerns the rebuild- 
ing of the nest or the continued care of the larve, 
it seems to make little or no difference to wasps 
whether they have their queen with them or not. 
For a time the loss of the queen-mother is not felt 
so much by wasps as by bees, and the swarm lives 
and works on as if nothing out of the usual course 
had happened. But while honey-bees can, within a 
certain number of days, replace their lost queen, to 
wasps the loss is irreparable. A newly-hatched 
larva of the honey-bee, put into royal traiing, 
emerges as a perfect female in less than thirteen 
days.* Meanwhile the expectation of her arrival 
keeps up some system and diligence in the hive. 
Within forty-six t hours of the time she has paired, 
she may begin to lay eggs, so that, after an imter- 
ruption of little more than a fortnight perfect order 
is restored, and all goes on again just as before. 
With wasps, however, it is quite otherwise. To 
them the loss of their queen, unperceived at first, is 
the dissolution of their society. 
It is the little rift within the lute, 
That by and by will make the music mute, 
And ever widening slowly silence all. 
There are plenty of more or less perfect females 
which lay eggs as soon as cells have been built to 
receive them, so that before the new queen-bee 
could have begun to lay at all, the eggs of the 
worker wasps would have become pup. But these 
eggs produce only male brood. After the loss of 
* Kirby and Spence, op. cit. p. 365. 
+ Ibid., op. cit. p. 374. 
t Tennyson. ‘Idylls of the King.’ Vivien’s song. 
