CLASS I. INSECTA: ORDER 3. HYMENOPTERA. 



559 



majestic iricanner, and Is always accompanied by a guard of twelve workers, an office taken in 

 turn, and never intermitted. The guards clear the way for the queen, and display the utmost 

 veneration toward her. From the time she begins to lay eggs, she becomes for the whole colony 

 an object of the utmost respect, and she permits 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 afterward. These eggs she deposits in cells already prepared for their use. 

 During tlie 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 

 extreuie, and in three weeks she lays more than twelve thousand eggs. Toward the eleventh 

 month of her existence she begins to lay eggs which produce the drones, or males, along with 

 others which belong to the working class ; those of the females 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 color, which, having no feet, is 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 indi- 

 vidual 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 inclose 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 daj^ from the birth of the larva, while the 

 females undergo their last metamorphosis on the thirteenth day. By varying the food given to 

 the larva?, the working bees, or nurses, can change them from woi'king bees, or neuters, into 

 females or queens. Should the queen bee be lost, the working bees immediately set to work and 

 break down several ordinaiy cells to convert them into a royal cell. The larva of one of these 

 cells is now fed so as to become a queen bee. When a young queen bee has finished her meta- 

 moi-phosis, and gnawed through the covering of the cell, a great agitation may be observed in 

 the hive. On one side may be seen working bees, which strive, as it were, to retain her in the 

 royal cell by shutting up all access to it ; on the other hand may be seen the old queen bee 

 approaching to endeavor to destroy her, in which attempt she is obstructed by hosts of working 



bees, which endeavor to arrest her progress, but make 

 no attack on her. At last, as if in a passion, she quits 

 the hive, and with her the greater part of the working 

 bees and males over whom she presided. The young 

 bees, too feeble to leave, remain with the young queen bee, 

 which now becomes the sovereign of a new colony, oc- 

 cupying the seat of the original one. The hive which 

 has left with the old queen remain together, and form a 

 new society, which, recommencing again all the labors we 

 have just described, furnishes, after a certain time, a second 

 swarm, whose emigration is determined by the same causes 

 as those which give rise to the first. A hive gives off 

 several swarms during a season, but the last are always 

 feeble. The colony sometimes breaks up on the death of 

 the queen bee, the attacks of enemies, or the weakness of 

 the swarm ; but the bees thus dispersed seek shelter in 

 other hives, where they are uniforndy destroyed by the pro- 

 prietors of the hive, for no strange bee is admitted into a 

 hive in which it was not born. Sometimes, also, a whole colony attacks another, and robs it of 

 its stores of provisions. 



This is a mere outline of the more common proceedings of these wonderful creatm'es. There 



CELLS OP HONEY-BEES. 



