6o STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



cannot be justified even by poetic licence. The 

 friends and relations are totally indifferent. Bees 

 know neither love nor regret. 



It is the general rule amongst the social Hy- 

 menoptera that new colonies are started by the 

 unaided efforts of a single queen, but this rule 

 is broken by the honey-bee. Here the queen 

 when starting a new colony is accompanied by 

 a large number of workers and a few drones, 

 the whole constituting the swarm. The pre- 

 liminaries to swarming are many ; the first is 

 the laying of unfertilised eggs in the drone-cells 

 old or new, for the drones take the longest time 

 in reaching maturity ; then a certain number of 

 queen-cells are built and provided with fertilised 

 eggs laid each some time after the other so that 

 they will be ripe for entrance into the hive at 

 successive intervals of forty-eight hours. When 

 once the cover is placed on the first of these royal- 

 cells, which hang usually to the number of six or 

 eight from the lower edge of a comb, with the 

 mouth downwards, the reigning queen becomes 

 restless. She intermits her egg-laying, moves 

 uneasily hither and thither, and with an unbridled 

 jealousy tries to break into the royal-cells and 

 so destroy her royal offspring and possible sue- 



