THE YOUNG QUEENS 133 



neighbouring cell, and that is absolutely identical with those 

 from which workers are hatched. 



From this egg, after three days, a small larva will issue, 

 and receive a special and very abundant nourishment ; and 

 henceforth we are able to follow, step by step, the movements 

 of one of those magnificently vulgar methods of nature on 

 which, were we dealing with men, we should bestow the 

 august name of fatality. The little larva, thanks to this 

 regimen, assumes an exceptional development ; and in its 

 ideas, no less than in its body, there ensues so considerable 

 a change that the bee to which it will give birth might 

 almost belong to an entirely different race of insects. 



Four or five years will be the period of her life, instead 

 of the six or seven weeks of the ordinary worker. Her ab- 

 domen will be twice as long, her colour more golden, and 

 clearer ; her sting will be curved, and her eyes have seven or 

 eight thousand facets instead of twelve or thirteen thousand. 

 Her brain will be smaller, but she will possess enormous 

 ovaries, and a special organ besides, the spermatheca, that 

 will render her almost an hermaphrodite. None of the in- 

 stincts will be hers that belong to a life of toil ; she will have 

 no brushes, no pockets wherein to secrete the wax, no baskets 

 to gather the pollen. The habits, the passions that we regard 

 as inherent in the bee, will all be lacking in her. She will 

 not crave for air, or the light of the sun ; she will die without 

 even once having tasted a flower. Her existence will pass in 

 the shadow, in the midst of a restless throng, her sole occu- 

 pation the indefatigable search for cradles that she must fill. 

 On the other hand she alone will know the disquiet of love. 

 Not even twice, it may be, in her life shall she look on 



