178 ZOOLOGY. 



honey, and they take means to strengthen the combs when 

 any accident threatens their safety. The males or drones do 

 not share in these labours, and when they are no longer of 

 any use to the community, the working bees sting them to 

 death. This carnage takes place between June and August, 

 and it extends even to the larvae and nymphae of the males. 



The female does no work ; she is always pampered and 

 attended to with the utmost care by the rest of the hive. 

 From the time she begins to lay eggs, she becomes for the 

 whole colony an object of the utmost respect, and she per- 

 mits no rival in the hive. Should one accidentally appear, 

 a mortal combat ensues, which terminates fatally for one, the 

 other remaining sovereign of the hive. So long as she is 

 shut up in her habitation she lays no eggs ; but should fine 

 weather appear, she leaves the cell and the hive a few days 

 after her birth, and ascends in the air out of sight with the 

 males. But she soon returns to the hive, and commences 

 laying eggs forty-six hours afterwards. These eggs she de- 

 posits in cells already prepared for their use. During the 

 first summer these eggs are not numerous, and they become 

 merely working bees. During winter she ceases to lay eggs, 

 but so soon as spring-time returns her fecundity becomes 

 extreme, and in three weeks she lays more than twelve thou- 

 sand eggs. Towards the eleventh month of her existence she 

 begins to lay eggs which produce the bourdons, or males, 

 along with others which belong to the working class ; those 

 of the female come a little later. In three or four days after 

 the laying, the eggs are fully hatched, and there comes forth 

 a little larva of a whitish colour, which, having no feet, is 

 quite helpless ; but the working bees provide amply for it, 

 and furnish it with a sort of bouillie, of which the qualities 

 vary with the age and sex of the individual for which it is 

 intended ; and at the moment of the transformation of the 

 larva into a nymph, they shut it into its cell, closing it in 

 with a covering of wax. Five days after the birth of the 

 larva of a working bee, its nurses enclose it thus in its cell. 

 It now spins around its body a web of silk, and at the end of 

 three days changes into a nymph. Finally, after having 

 remained under this form during seven days and a half, it 

 undergoes its last metamorphosis. The males do not attain 

 their perfect state before the twenty-first day from the birth 

 of the larva, whilst the females undergo their last metamor- 

 phosis on the thirteenth day. By varying the food given to 



