The Life of the Bee 
wrinkled wax or of inclined glands, her- 
metically sealed, which fills the place of three 
or four workers’ cells. As a rule they are 
grouped around the same point, and a nu- 
merous guard keep watch, with singular 
vigilance and restlessness, over this region 
that seems instinct with an indescribable 
prestige. For here the mothers are formed. 
In each one of these capsules, before the 
swarm departs, an egg will be placed by 
the mother, or more probably—though as 
to this we have no certain knowledge—by 
one of the workers; an egg that she will 
have taken from some 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 excep- 
tional development ; and in its ideas, no less 
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