138 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 
course to experiments yourself. Leaving you therefore 
to this best mode of proof, I shall proceed to another 
part of my history :—but first I must mention an experi- 
ment of Reaumur’s, which seems to come well in here. 
To ascertain whether the expectation of a queen was 
sufficient to keep alive the instinct and industry of the 
worker-bees, he placed in a glazed hive some royal cells 
containing both grubs and pupze, and then introduced 
about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. ‘These 
workers, which had been deprived of their queen, at 
first destroyed some of the grubs in these cells; but they 
clustered around two that were covered in, as if to im- 
part warmth to the pupee they contained; and on the 
following day they began to work upon the portions of 
comb with which he had supplied them, in order to fix 
and lengthen them. For two or three days the work 
went on very leisurely, but afterwards their labours as- 
sumed their usual character of indefatigable industry ?. 
There is no difficulty, therefore, when a hive loses its 
sovereign, to supply the bees with an object that will in- 
terest them, and keep their works in progress. 
There are a few other facts with respect to the larvee 
and pupze of the bees, which, before I enter upon the 
history of them in their perfect form, I shall now detail 
to you. Sixteen days is the time assigned to a queen for 
her existence in her preparatory states, before she is ready 
to emerge from her cell. Three she remains in the ege ; 
when hatched she continues feeding five more; when 
covered in she begins to spin her cocoon, which occupies 
another day: as if exhausted by this labour, she now 
4Reaum.y. 271 —~ 
