MANAGEMENT CF HONEY BEES. 85 
to the young worker on emerging from her 
prison, describing them as licking her body, 
supplying her with food, and seeming to in- 
struct her in what is necessary to render her 
a useful member of the community. These 
descriptions have been repeated by succeed- 
ing writers on the subject, and the existence 
of these amiable traits in the kind nurses of 
the young is taken for granted, as an indu- 
bitable fact in their natural history. Ihave 
reason, in consequence of repeated observa- 
tions, in my observatory hive, to disbelieve 
the alleged fact, and must, in accordance 
with the truth, withhold from my favorites 
the unmerited eulogiums they have received 
on this head. ‘They are, in fact, in this par- 
ticular, harsh and unfeeling in the extreme. 
In hundreds of instances, I have seen and pi- 
tied the infant insect, when, after having long 
struggled toget out of its cradle, it has at last 
succeeded so far as to extrude the head, and 
when laboring with the most eager impa- 
tience, and on the very pointof extricating the 
shoulders also, pct would at once secure 
