No. 144.] 347 



OF THE QUEEN. 



4. Anciently the name of king bee was used, because her sex 

 was then unknown. 



5. Her development from the egg to her birth, is thus. The 

 egg which is to produce her is deposited in a cell of peculiar form, 

 entirely different from those of the common bees. Three days 

 after the egg is deposited, a small worm comes out of it called a 

 larva. It is seen upon a whitish kind of pulp, very abundant at 

 the bottom of the cell. The worm appears to eat this. The 

 worm grows little by little for five days, and then assumes the form 

 of a little crescent; three days afterwards this crescent shuts up 

 with its head downwards ; it seems surprising that it does not 

 fall. The nourishment it receives is very abundant, so that there 

 always remains some after the birth of the queen. On the eighth 

 day the bees close completely the cell with the worm in it. The 

 worm then begins to spin a shell which will cover the head and 

 corslet of the bee when she is hatched out, her belly remaining 

 naked in the wax. On the eleventh day the larva assumes the 

 form of a nymph or pupa, having now all the parts of the queen, 

 and of remarkable whiteness. In a few days these parts harden, 

 begin to have color, and after seventeen days and a half, she 

 breaks the covering. 



6. The young queen now out of her cradle, does not exhibit 

 the characteristics so distinguishing which she subsequently 

 assumes, and wiiich she preserves until her fifth year. She be- 

 comes brown, short abdomen, more stocky than the workmen. 

 Her head is larger than theirs. She is marked by larger feet and 

 yellow. 



This deep, yellow, or golden color is observed on pupas of two 

 or three days old. After some weeks — above all, after a year — 

 the queen has a slender figure; her abdomen, pretty well deve- 

 loped, is not covered by the wings until towards the third year. 

 Her head appears smaller, her feet visibly larger^ and the golden 

 color now extends over her whole abdomen. Her feet are so im- 

 pregnated with gold as to seem transparent; her sting, covered 

 by her last ring, is not perpendicular to lier body, but bends be- 

 low in an angle. 



