FIEST LAYING OF THE QUEEN. 



to 92-5. It appears therefore that by the voluntary increase of 

 their respiration they were enabled to impart to the nymph 

 enclosed in the cocoon 12 '3 additional degrees of heat.* 



101. In every well- filled hive the combs are ranged in parallel 

 planes, as shown in figs. 36, 37 ; and that no space may be lost, 

 while at the same time sufficient room is left for the movements 

 of the workers, the open spaces between the parallel combs leave 

 a width just sufficient to allow two bees easily to pass each other. 

 These open spaces are the streets of the apiarian city, the high- 

 ways along which the building materials are carried while the 

 combs are in process of construction, through which the supply of 

 provisions is carried to the stores, and .food to the young, who are 

 being reared in the cells. 



But since the nurses must tend the cells of all the combs, and 

 therefore pass successively and frequently from street to street, 

 they would be compelled to descend to the lower edge of the comb 

 to arrive at an adjacent street, unless cross alleys were provided 

 at convenient points to abridge such journeys. The prudent 

 architects foresee this in laying out their city, and make such 

 passages, alleys, or arcades, by which the bees can pass from any 

 street to the adjacent parallel street, without going the long way 

 round. 



102. On the return of spring, when the genial temperature of the 

 weather begins to produce its wonted effects on vegetation, and 

 when the vernal plants which the bees love begin to put forth 

 their foliage and flower, the busy population of the hive re- 

 commence their labours ; and the queen, who has passed the 

 winter in repose, attended by her devoted subjects, and feeding 

 on the stores laid up by them during the previous season, com- 

 mences laying her great brood of eggs. At this epoch she ia 

 much larger than at the cessation of her laying in the autumn. 

 Before she deposits an egg, she examines carefully the cell 

 destined for it, putting her head and shoulders into it, and 

 remaining there for some time, as if to assure herself that the 

 cradle of her offspring has been put in proper order. Having 

 satisfied herself of this, she withdraws her head, and introducing 

 the posterior extremity of her abdomen deposits a single egg upon 

 the pyramidal base of the cell, which adheres there in the manner 

 already described. 



She then passes to another empty cell, where, after the same 

 precautions, she deposits another egg, and so continues, sometimes 

 committing to the cells two hundred eggs and upwards in the day. 



103. In this operation, so essential to the maintenance of the 

 population, she is assiduously followed and most respectfully 



* Philosophical Trans., 1837, p. 296. 



47 



