70 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BEE. 



The mother or queen bee lays its small egg at 

 the bottom of a cell. This is the young bee's cradle. 

 There; the other bees (for the queen takes no further 

 notice of it) surround it with a food, made of pollen 

 and honey mixed into a sort of jelly. In three days 

 the e^g hatches, and there comes forth the tiny larva, 

 which at once finds ready for it that kind of food 

 which it needs. 



Nourished with this food it grows rapidly, and, in 

 the course of six days from the time of hatching, — 

 or nine days from the time the egg was laid, — ^is 

 full grown, and almost fills the cell, and is ready to 

 begin the next, or pupa stage of insect life by spinning 

 around itself the silken web of the cocoon. And, as 

 it will now want no more food, but only to be left in 

 perfect quiet, the bees who take care of it put a kind 

 of cap or lid on the cell, and thus shut it in. They 

 make this covering of very fine threads of wax and 

 pollen beautifully woven together, but so contrived 

 that the necessary air is admitted to the young one 

 within. 



In its sealed-up cell the pupa, following the rule 

 of insect life, as before described, gradually developes 

 into the likeness of a bee. Its legs and wings are 

 formed. Its antennae grow. Its mouth and other 

 parts take their proper shape, and in twelve days 

 more — or twenty-one from the time the egg was 

 laid, — it is ready to come out of its prison-house 

 a perfect, full-formed bee : and so cuts away the 

 cover of its cell, and creeps forth, to be received with 

 gladness by its companions who have taken such care 

 of it in its helpless state. 



