234 BUMBLE-BEES 



time permits, a third. But presently the cares of mater- 

 nity become almost overpowering. The eggs in the first 

 cell have hatched rapidly; the larvae make short work 

 of the slender store of honey-soaked pollen provided for 

 them, and begin crying out for more. Mother Bee has 

 to give up egg-laying and architecture, and goes abroad 

 to collect more food, which she pokes into the ceU through 

 a tiny hole cut in the top. The babies grow fast and 

 become obstreperous, dinting and bulging the waxen sides 

 of their nursery in their struggles to get out ; when lo ! 

 some fine morning all is still. Every one of them has 

 spun itself a separate cocoon of fine silk and fallen fast 

 asleep. Then the queen knows it is safe to open the cell, 

 because when the sleepers wake they will be perfect worker 

 bumbles. Out they come, with gauzy wings and velvety 

 tails — jolly, hearty little chaps, who set to work at once 

 to relieve their royal mother of the labour of feeding the 

 other larvae. This is now a matter of increasing urgency, 

 because, although the queen laid up food for the young 

 workers, she put none in the cells of the males and females 

 upon whom the future of the race depends. 



But the queen-mother has plenty of willing workers at 

 her bidding now, and takes her leisure, devoting it entirely 

 to the luxury of egg-laying. Meantime, her subjects 

 labour incessantly, collecting honey and pollen for the 

 rising generations, storing it in the misshapen cells as 

 they are vacated by successive hatches. Country school- 

 boys, rats, weasels, and foxes all know these honey-tubs, 

 which are piled in disorderly masses, very different from 

 the faultless regularity of the honey-bees' comb. 



By midsummer the colony is in full swing, and, seeing 

 that some of the young females are allowed to share the 



