THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 131 
_mucha 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 
