82 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



secretion might be. As, however, the larva gains size 

 and power, the process of weaning commences, and 

 its food undergoes a change, having now undoubted 

 pollen, honey, and water added to it — the glandular 

 secretion being, of course, gradually withdrawn. The 

 pollen grains, moreover, are living, and are generally 

 found in a growing condition, proving that they have 

 never entered the stomach of the nurse, and, certainly, 

 that they are not semi-digested, and so utterly con- 

 tradicting the Dufour theory. In the case of the queen 

 larva, I discover that weaning is not adopted, but that 

 secretion, commonly, though, as I hold, erroneously, 

 called royal jelly, is added unstintingly to the end ; so 

 that, at the close of the feeding period, an abundance 

 of highly nutritious food, which I apprehend does not 

 intrinsically differ from that at first given to the 

 worker larva, remains, and to which the chrysalis for 

 some time adheres, possibly continuing to draw from 

 it, by osmose (fluid diffusion), material which aids 

 its development. The queen larva does get a very 

 small addition of pollen, the residue of which collects 

 in the middle bowel; but this seems to be rather 

 accidental than otherwise. 



The first brood food, or pap (page 19)— I am almost 

 tempted to say bee milk — is, then, a highly nitrogenous 

 tissue-former, derived from pollen by digestion, and has, 

 apparently, a singular power in developing the genera- 

 tive faculty ; for I find drone larvae receive much more 

 of it than those of workers, to whom any accidental 

 excess possibly gives the power of ovipositing, as we 

 find it in the abnormal fertile worker. From these 

 considerations, I have been led towards a theory, the 



