BOMBUS. 313 



receptacle sufiiciently large for her first gatherings of 

 pollen and honey, whereon to deposit her first eggs, and 

 to form a waxen cruse or two to contain the honey re- 

 quisite for the nest operations of keeping these masses 

 moist enough for the nurture of the larvae. The ma- 

 terial of these pots although called wax is not pro- 

 perly so, but is an agglutination of collected vegetable 

 matter, for it is not plastic to the fingers like wax, and 

 it burns, leaving a carbonaceous residuum very attractive 

 to moisture. The larvae hatched from the eggs now 

 deposited produce the first neuters, which spin a cocoon 

 wherein they rapidly undergo their transformations. 

 They are, in the first instance, aided to emerge from 

 their silken cot by the parent gnawing off its top, but 

 subsequently this duty is performed, as the family in- 

 creases, by the neuters then developed. The young 

 bee, on emerging from its cocoon, is not thoroughly 

 hardened in its integument, and its pubescence also 

 acquires by degrees only its proper colouring ; all this 

 is not long in being effected, but, until they are tho- 

 roughly able to fly forth, they continue to be fed by 

 their elder sisterhood, for the neuters are properly ab- 

 ortive females. Males, and further productive females 

 are produced later in the spring, and are smaller than 

 the normal sizes of those sexes ; the autumnal brood, con- 

 sisting also of males and females, again resume the full 

 size of the complete insect, and it is these females which, 

 after impregnation, hibernate and reappear in the fol- 

 lowing early spring to be each the parent of a new 

 progeny. The population of these nests varies consi- 

 derably in the several species : in some, as in that of 

 Bombus ierrestris, there are more than two hundred, 

 and in that of B. senilis there are about a hundred 



