20 THE HIVE AND THE HONEY-BEE. 



honey or farina. When five days old, the young bee, if a queen, 

 is ready to commence the office of a mother. 



In the event of the eggs being designed to produce drones, 

 their changes present precisely the same phenomena , as in the 

 case of workers, except that they take more time, requiring 

 twenty-four days for the change. Huber states that the eggs of 

 the males require eleven months to be perfected in the ovaria of 

 the queen, and assigns this as a reason why the eggs of workers 

 continue to be deposited for eleven months before the queen 

 commences depositing those of Drones. There are, however, 

 some facts which at least throw some doubt on this suggestion ; 

 among others, that if a young queen be not impregnated within 

 twenty days after her emergence from the cell, all her subse- 

 quent progeny will be drones, and drones only. I am not aware 

 that any naturalist has yet attempted an explanation of this very 

 remarkable fact. The eggs of the queen differ in no respects, 

 when laid, from those of workers or drones, but they are deposit- 

 ed in peculiarly formed cells, already described ; but when the 

 larva appears on the fourth day, and from that time, extraordi- 

 nary attention is bestowed upon it, and it is fed upon a peculiar 

 substance, a sort of rich jelly of an acid character. In five days 

 the royal larva commences forming her web, and the nurses close 

 up her cell. In four and twenty hours she has completed her 

 cocoon, in which state she remains for nearly three days. She is 

 then pupa aurelia or nymph, and after five or six days more the 

 royal insect is perfect. The young queen does not, however, 

 like the other bees, begin at once to extricate herself from her 

 cradle ; her cell is, on the other hand, now more securely fasten- 

 ed than ever. But one reigning monarch is permitted to exist in 

 the hive, and it is only in the event of the old queen dying, or 

 issuing forth with a swarm, that the young aspirant to the throne 

 is discharged from captivity. So strong is the instinct which 

 prompts the bees to permit but the presence of a single sovereign 

 in each hive, that the old queen makes frequent attempts to get 

 at the royal cells ; if she succeed in doing so, she will rend them 

 open, and furiously destroy their contents ; and the moment a 

 young queen is suffered to depart from her cell, her very first 

 act is to destroy her yet unreleased, and often undeveloped, 

 royal sisters. It occasionally happens that two queens emerge 

 at the same time ; when this occurs a mortal combat ensues, 

 which only terminates in the death of one of the combatants— 



