ANIMAL COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL LIFE 153 



they are fed with pollen and honey. Finally, a small mass 

 of food is put into the cell, and the cell is " capped " or 

 covered with wax. The larva, after eating all the food, in 

 two or three days more changes into a pupa, which lies 

 quiescent without eating for thirteen days, when it changes 

 into a full-grown bee. The new bee breaks open the cap 

 of the cell with its jaws, and comes out into the hive, ready 

 to take up its share of the work for the community. In a 

 few cases, however, the life history is different. The nurses 

 will tear down several cells around some single one, and 

 enlarge this inner one into a great irregular vase-shaped 

 cell. When the egg hatches, the grub or larva is fed bee- 

 jelly as long as it remains' a larva, never being given ordi- 

 nary pollen and honey at all. This larva finally pupates, 

 and there issues from the pupa not a worker or drone bee, 

 but a new queen. The egg from which the queen is pro- 

 duced is the same as the other eggs, but the worker nurses 

 by feeding the larva only the highly nutritious bee-jelly 

 make it certain that the new bee shall become a queen 

 instead of a worker. It is also to be noted that the male 

 bees or drones are hatched from eggs that are not ferti- 

 lized, the queen having it in her power to lay either ferti- 

 lized or unfertilized eggs. From the fertilized eggs hatch 

 larvaB which develop into queens or workers, depending on 

 the manner of their nourishment; from the unfertilized 

 eggs hatch the males. 



When several queens appear there is much excitement 

 in the community. Each community has normally a single 

 one, so that when additional queens appear some rearrange- 

 ment is necessary. This rearrangement comes about first 

 by fighting among the queens until only one of the new 

 queens is left alive. Then the old or mother queen issues 

 from the hive or tree folio-wed by many of the workers. 

 She and her followers fly away together, finally alighting 

 on some tree branch and massing there in a dense swarm. 

 This is the familiar phenomenon of "swarming." The 



