PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 395 



I have described to you the persons of the different individuals that 

 compose the society of the bee-hive more in detail than I should otherwise 

 have done, in order that you may be the better able to form a judgment 

 upon a most extraordinary circumstance in their history, which is supported 

 by evidence that seems almost incontrovertible. The fact to which I 

 allude is this — that if the bees are deprived of their queen, and are sup- 

 plied with comb containing young worker brood only, they will select one 

 or more to be educated as queens ; which, by having a royal cell erected 

 for their habitation, and being fed with royal jelly for not more than two 

 days, when they emerge from the pupa state (though, if they had remain- 

 ed in the cells which they originally inhabited, they would have turned 

 out workers) will come forth complete queens, with their form, instincts, 

 and powers of generation entirely different. In order to produce this effect, 

 the grub must not be more than three days old ; and this is the age at 

 which, according to Schirach (the first apiarist who called the public 

 attention to this miracle of nature), the bees usually elect the larvae to be 

 royally educated ; though it appears from Ruber's observations, that a 

 larva two days or even twenty-four hours old will do.^ Having chosen a 

 grub, they remove the inhabitants and their food from two of the cells 

 which join that in which it resides ; they next take down the partitions 

 which separate these three cells ; and, leaving the bottoms untouched, 

 raise round the selected worm a cylindrical tube, which follows the hori- 

 zontal direction of the other cells : but since at the close of the third day 

 of its life its habitation must assume a different form and direction, they 

 gnaw away the cells below it, and sacrifice without pity the grubs they 

 contain, using the wax of which they were formed to construct a new 

 pyramidal tube, which they join at right angles to the horizontal one, the 

 diameter of the former diminishing insensibly from its base to its mouth. 

 During the two days which the grub inhabits this cell, like the common 

 royal cells now become vertical^, a bee may always be observed with its 

 head plunged into it ; and when one quits it another takes its place. 

 These bees keep lengthening the cell as the worm grows older, and duly 

 supply it with food, which they place before its mouth, and round its body. 

 The animal, which can only move in a spiral direction, keeps incessantly 

 turning to take the jelly deposited before it ; and thus slowly working 

 downwards, arrives insensibly near the orifice of the cell, just at the time 

 that it is ready to assume the pupa ; when, as before described, the work- 

 ers shut up its cradle with an appropriate covering.^ 



When you have read this account, I fear, with the celebrated John 

 Hunter, you will not be very ready to believe it ; at least you will call 

 upon me to bring forth my " strong reasons " in support of it. What ! — 

 you will exclaim — can a larger and warmer house (for the royal cells are 

 affirmed to enjoy a higher temperature than those of the other bees'*), a 

 different and more pungent kind of food, and a vertical instead of a 

 horizontal posture, in the first place, give a bee a differently shaped tongue 

 and mandibles ; render the surface of its posterior tibiae flat instead of 

 concave ; deprive them of the fringe of hairs that forms the basket for 



1 Huber, i. 13?! ~ ~ " 



* Reaumur, who was, however, unacquainted with this extraordinary fact, has figured 

 one of these cells, v. t. 32. f. 3. h. 

 ' Compare Bonnet, x. 156. with Huber, 1. 134. ■• Schirach, 69. 



