PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 147 
= 
ease there could be no swarms, and the race would pe- 
rish. But this is wisely prevented by a circumstance 
which invariably takes place—that the first swarm is 
conducted by this queen, and not by a newly disclosed 
one, as Reaumur and others have supposed. Previously 
to her departure, after her great laying of male eggs in 
the month of May, she oviposits in the royal cells when 
about three or four lines in length, which the workers 
have in the mean time constructed. These however are 
not all furnished in one day, 
a most essential provision, 
in consequence of which the queens come forth succes- 
sively, in order to lead successive swarms. ‘There is 
something singular in the manner in which the workers 
treat the young queens that are to lead the swarms. After 
the cells are covered in, one of their first employments 
is to remove here and there a portion of the wax from 
their surface, so as to render it unequal; and imme- 
diately before the last metamorphosis takes place, the 
walls are so thin that all the motions of the inclosed 
pupa are perceptible through them. On the seventh 
day the part covering the head and trunk of the young 
female, if I may so speak, is almost entirely unwaxed. 
This operation of the bees facilitates her exit, and pro- 
bably renders the evaporation of the superabundant fluids 
of the body of the pupa more easy. 
You will conclude, perhaps, when all things are thus 
prepared for the coming forth of the inclosed female, 
that she will quit her cell at the regular period, which is 
seven days:—but you would be mistaken. Were she 
indeed permitted to pursue her own inclinations, this 
would be the case: but here the bees show how much 
faa) 
IL 4 
