218 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 



I shall here state some conjectures which have occurred to 

 me on this subject. Is it absolutely certain that bees can 

 raise a queen from any egg or young worm which would 

 produce a worker.' Or if this is possible, is it certain that 

 every kind of workers can accomplish this } Huber ascer- 

 tained to his own satisfaction that there were two kinds of 

 workers in a hive. He thus describes them : 



" One of these is, in general, destined for the elaboration 

 of wax, and its size is considerably enlarged when full of 

 honey ; the other immediately imparts what it has collected, 

 to its companions, its abdomen undergoes no sensible change, 

 or it retains only the honey necessary for its own subsistence. 

 The particular function of the bees of this kind is to take care 

 of the young, for they are not charged with provisioning the 

 hive. Tn opposition to the wax workers, we shall call them 

 small bees or nurses." 



"Although the external difference be inconsiderable, this 

 is not an imaginary distinction. Anatomical observations 

 prove that the capacity of the stomach is not the same : 

 experiments have ascertained that one of the species cannot 

 fulfill all the functions shared among the workers of a hive. 

 We painted those of each class with different colors, in order 

 to study their proceedings ; and these were not interchang- 

 ed. In another experiment, after supplying a hive deprived 

 of a queen with brood and pollen, we saw the small bees 

 quickly occupied in nutrition of the larvae, while those of the 

 wax working class neglected them. Small bees also produce 

 wax, but in a very inferior quantity to what is elaborated by 

 the real wax workers." 



Now if these statements can be relied on, and I have nearly 

 always found Ruber's statements, wherever I have tested 

 them, perfectly reliable, then it may be that when bees refuse 

 to cluster on the brood comb, to rear a new queen, it is because 



