THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 131 



much a product of direct artifice as she is of original 

 nature. We have seen how the egg containing 

 the feminine germ, if given full scope and oppor- 

 tunity, develops into what may be taken as the 

 complete aboriginal type of female bee, differing 

 from the worker in a dozen essential ways. The 

 queen also is probably, in one respect at least — her 

 amazing fecundity — a deliberate creation of the 

 hive-people, as her over-production is brought 

 about by over-stimulation to meet an artificial state 

 of affairs. Left to herself, under pristine condi- 

 tions, she would certainly lay on a much more 

 moderate scale. But the worker-bee owes her 

 unique structure and mental constitution almost 

 entirely to the intervention of her nurses from the 

 moment of the hatching of the egg. Careful ex- 

 periment has proved that the queen-larva and the 

 worker-larva are identical up to the third day of 

 their life in the cell, except that the queen has 

 made more rapid growth owing to more generous 

 and more ample fare. After the third day, the 

 genital system of each larva will begin to develop, 

 if this rich nitrogenous diet is maintained. In the 

 case of the queen, this pre-digested food, well 

 called bee-milk, is lavished on the favoured grub 

 up to the last moment of its larval existence, no 

 other food being given. But in the case of the 

 worker-grub, not only has its supply of bee-milk 

 been restricted in both quantity and quality from 

 the day of its birth, but now — ^just before the 

 9 — 2 



