150 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 
much more laborious and difficult task to keep them 
from destroying each other. 
When the bees thus delay the entrance of the young 
queens into their world, they invariably let out the old- 
est first; and they probably know their progress to ma- 
turity by the emission of the sound lately mentioned. 
The accurate Huber took the trouble to mark all the 
royal cells in a hive as soon as the workers had covered 
them in, and he found that they were all liberated ac- 
eording to seniority. Those first covered first emit the 
sound, and so on successively; whence he conjectures 
that this is the sign by which the workers discover their 
age. As their captivity, however, is sometimes prolong- 
ed to eight cr ten days, this circumstance in that time 
may be forgotten. In this case he supposes that their 
tones grow stronger as they grow older, by which the 
workers may be enabled to distinguish them. It is re- 
markable that no guard is placed round the mute queens 
bred according to the Lusatian method, which, when 
the time for their appearance is come, are not detained 
in captivity a single moment; but, as you have heard, 
are left to fight, conquer, or die?. 
You must not think, however, from what I have been 
saying, that the old queen never destroys the young 
ones previously to her leading forth the earliest swarm. 
‘She is allowed the most uncontrolled liberty of action ; 
and if she chooses to approach and destroy the royal cells, 
her subjects do not oppose her. It sometimes happens, 
2 Huber, i. 286. 
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