Wasps, Bees, and Ants 525 



capped, the opening being at the bottom of the hanging, nut-shaped cell, 

 and in only seven days more the fully developed bee issues. This bee is a 

 queen. Very rarely a worker and not a queen issues from a queen-cell. 

 That is, a larva hatching from a fertilized egg laid by the queen in a small 

 hexagonal cell, if fed bee-jelly for two or three days and then pollen and honey, 

 will develop into a worker; that larva from the same egg, if fed bee- jelly 

 all its life, and reared in a large roomy cell, will develop into a queen. The 

 difference between a queen honey-bee and a worker honey-bee, both struc- 

 tural and physiological, are, as already pointed out, conspicuous. The 

 influence of a varying food-supply is something mysteriously potent, and 

 this case of the queen bee gives great comfort to those biologists who believe 

 that the external or extrinsic factors surrounding an animal during develop- 

 ment have much influence in determining its outcome. 



As there is by immemorial honey-bee tradition but one queen in a com- 

 munity at one time, when new queens issue from the great cells something 

 has to happen. This may be one of three things: either the old and 

 new queens battle to death, and it is believed that in such battles only does 

 a queen bee ever use her sting, or the workers interfere and kill either the 

 old or new queen by "balling" her' (gathering in a tight suffocating mass 

 about her), or either old (usually old) or new queen leaves the hive with a 

 swarm, and a new community is founded. If several new queens are to 

 issue, the workers usually, by thickening from the outside the walls of one 

 or more of the cells, compel the issuing to be successive and not simultaneous. 

 This results in a series of royal battles, or a series of swarmings, or a com- 

 bination of the two. A queen ready to issue from a cell makes a curious 

 piping audible some yards from the hive, which is answered by a louder 

 piping, a trumpeting, from the old queen. At these times there is great 

 excitement in the hive, as indeed there is during all of the queen-raising 

 season. 



The swarming out, it is apparent, does not break up the old community; 

 in fact only accident, or the successful attacks of such insidious enemies 

 as the bee-moth, and various contagious diseases, break up the parent 

 colony. In this respect is to be noted an important difference between 

 the other social bees and wasps with their communities annually destroyed 

 and refounded, and the honey-bee with its persistent one. Of course workers 

 die and so do drones and queens. The tireless workers which hatch and 

 labor in the spring and summer months rarely live more than six or eight 

 weeks, while the workers born in the late autumn and remaining quietly 

 in the shelter of the hive through the winter live for several months. Queens 

 live, usually, if no accident befalls, two or three years; an age of four or 

 five years is occasionally attained. Most of the drones in each community 

 either die naturally before winter comes or are killed by the workers. Feeble 



