The Young Queens 
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 abdomen 
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 thir- 
teen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, 
but she will possess enormous ovaries, 
and a special organ besides, the sperma- 
theca, that will render her almost an 
hermaphrodite. None of the instincts 
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 pas- 
sions, 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; 
245 
