§ II.] THE (2UEEN. 17 



egg previously intended for a worker bee — but a larva 

 will serve, so it be not grown to its full size — and then 

 they enlarge the cell so selected by destroying the sur- 

 rounding partitions; they thus form a royal cradle, in 

 shape very much like an acorn-cup inverted. The 

 chosen embryo is then fed liberally with a peculiar 

 description of nurture, called by naturalists " royal jelly" 

 —a pungent food composed of honey and digested pollen, 

 and prepared by the worker bees exclusively for those 

 of the larvae that are destined to become candidates for 

 the honour of royalty. The effect of this is both to 

 perfect and to hasten the development of the future 

 insect, so that instead of a worker being produced at 

 the end of twenty-one days, a queen emerges in the 

 reduced term of sixteen. 



But should the deprivation happen at a time when, 

 either from the season or from abnormal circumstances, 

 there is no worker brood in the hive, the bees will then 

 often exhibit a series of curious and even ludicrous 

 struggles, which Von Berlepsch has aptly compared to 

 the clutchings at straws made by a drowning man. 

 Themselves individually are no sufferers ; but bees look 

 beyond themselves, and posterity they must have. Their 

 sole preoccupation, therefore, is to raise drones and a 

 queen. Some of them often develop a capacity to lay 

 drone eggs (as explained under § ix.), and most of these 

 they will carefully cherish for their natural purpose, but 

 others they will surround with royal cells and feed with 



