Phenomena of Instinct 1 5 7 



sight, to be fertilized by one of them. Up to this time 

 the workers pay her no attention : now they treat her as 

 a queen. Up to this time the workers have lived on 

 good terms with the drones : now they turn upon them 

 and a massacre commences which only ends in the 

 death of the last male. Sometimes the queen has to 

 leave the hive two or three times before her purpose is 

 accomplished, and in that case the males are allowed to 

 live on sufferance : usually a single journey is sufficient, 

 and the males are doomed to perish without delay. 

 The fertilized queen soon begins to busy herself in 

 laying eggs, and until the time of swarming comes, 

 when the last egg has been laid, she remains at home. 

 For the first twenty days or thereabouts she goes on 

 laying the eggs of workers at the rate of a hundred a 

 day or more : for the next ten days or thereabouts she 

 lays male eggs at the same rate : for three or four 

 weeks longer every second or third day she deposits a 

 single egg which is destined to become a queen. All 

 this while, and for some time previously, the workers 

 are busy enough, some in gathering honey or propolis 

 the latter material being a transparent, jelly-like, garnet- 

 coloured, resinous gum, secreted by certain plants, and 

 used, along with wax, for building purposes, others in 

 laying the foundation of the cells. The honey, which is 

 sucked up into the honey-bag or anterior stomach, and 

 so carried, is wanted for their own support, and as 

 material for the secretion of the wax which oozes out 

 between the rings on the abdomen : the propolis is 

 collected ready formed, made into pellets, and carried 

 in the " baskets," which are cavities hollowed out in the 

 inner surface of the thighs of the middle legs. All are 

 in haste to be rid of their wax and propolis as soon as 

 they return to the hive, and, to expedite matters, each 



