256 UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 
For filling up the crevices of the hive bees employ ‘propolis ”, 
which consists of resin collected from the buds and bark of trees, 
especially horse-chestnuts and pines. It is carried to the hive 
in the same way as pollen. 
The limbless grubs which hatch out from the eggs in three 
days’ time are fed and tended by the younger workers, and at first 
receive a soft substance consisting of honey and pollen that have 
been swallowed and partly digested by their attendants, with 
which is mixed a fluid secreted by certain glands of the head. 
This mixture is commonly known as ‘royal jelly”. Larve 
hatched from unfertilized eggs always become drones, but those 
emerging from fertilized eggs may become either workers or 
queens, according to the way in which they are fed. A larva 
which the workers intend shall become a queen is nourished 
entirely upon royal jelly, possibly differing in composition from 
that which the others at first receive. It would appear to be of 
stimulating nature, for queens develop more quickly than members 
of the other castes, requiring only 15 days (from the laying of the 
egg) as against 21 for a worker, and 24 for a drone. The larve 
destined to become workers or drones are quickly ‘ weaned ”, 
honey, pollen, and water being substituted for jelly. After being 
fed for 5 days (or 6 in the case of drones) the larve attain their 
full size, when the workers seal the cells with a mixture of pollen 
and wax, that permits the diffusion of air. Within its cell the 
larva spins a silken cocoon, imperfect at the hinder-end in the case 
of queens, and passes into the motionless pupa stage, from which, 
later on, the perfect insect emerges, to bite its way out into the 
hive. 
When a hive becomes overcrowded the surplus population, 
accompanied by the reigning queen, “swarms” out of the hive 
to seek fresh quarters. This never takes place unless one or 
more royal cells with inmates are present in the deserted home. 
When the first young queen emerges from these, her first act 
is to tear open the remaining royal cells and sting the inmates to 
death, an operation which is rendered possible by the imperfect 
nature of the cocoons in which these are enclosed. After a nuptial 
flight the young queen settles down as the new mother of the 
community. Sometimes the workers will prevent the first emerged 
young queen from destroying her sisters, and in that case there 
is a possibility of the first migration being succeeded by after- 
