208 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 
nuptial flight, stored in a special receptacle. And the size and 
shape of the drone-cell may supply the stimulus through which 
her behaviour in this respect is determined. But she lays 
similarly fertilized eggs in both the worker-cells and the 
queen-cells; and in these two cases the stimulating conditions 
must be different. 
When the eggs have been laid, and the grubs hatched, 
the worker bees assume new duties—the feeding and tending 
of the young. They eat honey and pollen, which is partially 
digested, and supplied as pap to the grubs in such quantities 
that they seem bathed in it; but after a short time a mixture 
of honey pollen and water is substituted for this pap. It is 
said that the drone larve are fed with pap for a longer period 
than the workers ; and the queen larva undoubtedly receives 
far more of this pap—or, perhaps, of a still richer nutritive 
product, sometimes spoken of as royal jelly—and, indeed, is 
supplied therewith throughout larval life. It is generally 
believed that this high feeding is the cause of queen-develop- 
ment, and that should the queen larve die ordinary worker 
larve are fed up, and produce queens nowise dissimilar to those 
developed in the royal cells. It is clear, if this be so, that the 
behaviour of the nurses decides the difference between the 
future queens and working bees—that is to say, the fertile 
and the sterile females. In any case, the feeding of the young 
by members of the same community is a fact to be specially 
noted. It is commonly said that the family is the germ from 
which the social community springs; and it may be added 
that food-collection or food-administration in some form makes 
the difference between the family that coheres and the family 
that scatters. 
When the larve have been fed, each after its kind, the 
workers seal up the cells with lids of pollen and wax ; the larvee 
spin cocoons, pass into the pupa stage, and then change to perfect 
bees, which bite a way through the lid and take their place 
in the hive. These young bees now become the nurses, while 
the older bees go abroad to fetch honey and pollen to be stored 
away in some of the cells. But when a queen emerges, her 
