160 Traces of Unity in the 



the guard has to control the motions of this instinct,' 

 always by protecting the queens that still remain in 

 their cells, and sometimes, perhaps, by protecting the 

 queen herself. At all events, it is certain that a stray 

 queen who happens to find her way into the hive while 

 the process of oviposition is going on actively, and 

 while, therefore, the egg-layer is oppressed by her 

 burden, is likely to lose her life, not because she has 

 been attacked by the queen, but because she has been 

 overwhelmed under a mob of workers. For the rest, all 

 that need be said is that from this point the history of 

 the hive goes on steadily in the old way, with this 

 difference only that in this case the cells have to be, not 

 built, but only cleaned out and repaired, the main 

 passages being still intact ^-the flying of the queen after 

 the drones the impregnation by one of them before her 

 return the recognition of the queen as queen after 

 fertilization and not before it the massacre of the 

 drones by the workers the laying of eggs in the 

 prescribed order- the storing of honey and polenta in 

 due time the feeding of the worms the sealing of the 

 cells and, lastly, the swarming when the eggs are all 

 laid and the hive is overcrowded by new bees that have 

 already issued from the eggs first laid. 



Again and again this process is repeated with the 

 same results. When a queen is wanted a queen is 

 forthcoming ; and until they are wanted they are kept 

 in the royal cells under guard, and fed by nurses with 

 food suitable to their age, that is, with royal jelly in the 

 worm stage of their existence, and with honey in the 

 imago-stage, the honey used in the latter case being 

 placed on the lids of the closed cells near a hole through 

 which the proboscis of the insect may pass in and out 

 easily. The interval between the laying of the royal 



