204 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
in the various stages of their development. It is 
well ascertained that the physical and temperamental 
differences between queen and worker-bee, widely 
marked as they appear, are entirely due to treatment 
and feeding during the larval stage. That the eggs 
producing the two are identical is proved by the 
fact that these can be transposed without con- 
founding the original purpose of the hive. The 
queen-egg placed in the worker-cell develops into 
a common worker, while the worker-egg, when 
exalted to a queen’s cradle, infallibly produces a 
fully accoutred queen bee. The experiment can 
also be made even with the young grubs, provided 
that these are no more than three days old, and the 
same result ensues. 
A close study of the food administered to bees 
when in the larval stage of their career is specially 
interesting, because it gives us the key to many 
otherwise inexplicable matters connected with hive- 
life. We do not know, and probably never shall 
know, how mere variation in diet causes certain 
organs to appear and certain other bodily parts to 
absent themselves. If the difference between queen 
and worker-bee were simply one of development, 
the worker being only an undersized, semi-atrophied 
specimen of a queen, there would be little mystery 
about it. But each has several highly specialised 
organs, of which the other has no trace, just as 
each has certain functions reduced to mere 
rudimentary uselessness, which, in the other, 
possess enormous development and a correspond- 
ing importance. 
Clearly the food given in each case has peculiar 
properties, bringing about certain definite invariable 
