AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 213 
Humble-bees!, which in respect of their general policy must, when com~ 
ared with bees and wasps, be regarded as rude and untutored villagers, 
exhibit, nevertheless, marks of affection to their young quite as strong as 
their more polished neighbours. The females, like those of wasps, take 
a considerable share in their education. When one of them has with 
rreat labour constructed a commodious waxen cell, she next furnishes it 
with a store of pollen moistened with honey; and then, having deposited 
six or seven eggs, carefully closes the orifice and minutest interstices with 
wax. But this is not the whole of her task. By a strange instinct, which, 
however, may be necessary to keep the population within due bounds, the 
workers, while she is occupied in laying her eggs, endeavour to seize 
them from her, and, if they succeed, greedily devour them. To prevent 
this violence, her utmost activity is scarcely adequate; and it is only 
after she has again and again beat off the murderous intruders and pursued 
them to the furthest verge of the nest, that she succeeds in her operation. 
When finished, she is still under the necessity of closely guarding the cell, 
which the gluttonous workers would otherwise tear open, and devour the 
eggs. This duty she performs for six or eight hours with the vigilance of 
an Argus, at the end of which time they lose their taste for this food, and 
will not touch it even when presented to them. Here the labours of the 
mother cease, and are succeeded by those of the workers. These know 
the precise hour when the grubs have consumed their stock of food, and 
from that time to their maturity regularly feed them with either honey or 
pollen, introduced in their proboscis through a small hole in the cover of 
the cell opened for the occasion and then carefully closed. 
They are equally assiduous in another operation. As the grubs increase 
in size, the cell which contained them becomes too small, and in their 
exertions to be more at ease they split its thin sides. To fill up these 
breaches as fast as they occur with a patch of wax is the office of the 
workers, who are constantly on the watch to discover when their services 
are wanted ; and thus the cells daily increase in size, in a way which to 
an observer ignorant of the process seems yery extraordinary. 
The last duty of these affectionate foster-parents is to assist the young 
bees in cutting open the cocoons which have enclosed them in the state 
of pup@. A previous labour, however, must not be omitted, The workers 
adopt similar measures with the hive-bee for maintaining the young pup 
concealed in these cocoons in a genial temperature. In cold weather and 
at night they get upon them and impart the necessary warmth by brooding 
over them in clusters.? Connected with this part of their domestic eco- 
1 Dr, Johnson was ignorant of the etymology of this word. It is clearly derived 
from the German Hummel or Hummel Biene, a name probably given it from its 
sound. Our English name would be more significant were it altered to Humming- 
bee or Booming-bee. 
_ 7 Anew and yery remarkable fact observed by Mr. Newport, and communicated 
in his valuable paper on the temperature of insects, is that in the process of incuba- 
tion above referred to, especially that adopted ten or twelve hours before the nymph 
makes its appearance as a perfect humble-bee, the required augmentation of heat is 
produced by the nurse or brooding-bees voluntarily increasing the number of their 
respirations, which at first are very gradual, but become more and more frequent 
until they reach sometimes 120 or 130 per minute; aud Mr. Newport has seen a bee 
on the combs continue perseveringly to respire at this rate for eight or ten hours till 
its temperature was greatly increased and its body bathed in perspiration, when she 
Would generally discontinue her office for a time, and an individual occasionally take 
PS 
