PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 353 
difference between them and the workers, but chiefly by the diversity of 
their instincts: — from the other females they are distinguished solely by 
their diminutive size. Like those of the wasps and hive-bees, these minor 
queens produce only male eggs, which come out in time to fertilise the 
young females that found the vernal colonies. M. P. Huber suspects that, 
as in the case of the female bee, it is a different kind of food that develops 
their ovaries, and so distinguishes them from the workers. They are 
generally attended by a small number of males, who form their court. 
M. Huber, watching at midnight the proceedings of a nest which he kept 
under a glass, observed the inhabitants to be in a state of great agitation ; 
many of these bees were engaged in making a cell; the queen-mother of 
the colony, as she may be called, who is always extremely jealous of her 
pigmy rivals, came and drove them away from the cell ;—she in her turn 
was driven away by the others, which pursued her, beating their wings with 
the utmost fury, to the bottom of the nest. The cell was then constructed, 
and two of them at the same time oviposited in it. The queen returned 
to the charge, exhibiting similar signs of anger ; and, chasing them away 
again, put her head into the cell, when, seizing the eggs that had been laid, 
she was observed to devour them with great avidity. The same scene 
was again renewed, with the same issue. After this, one of the small 
females returned, and covered the empty cells with wax. When the 
mother-queen was removed, several of the small females contended for the 
cell with indescribable rage, all endeavouring to lay their eggs in it at the 
same time. These small females perish in the autumn, 
The males are usually smaller than the large females, and larger than the 
small ones and workers. ‘They may be known by their longer, more fili- 
form, and slenderer antennez ; by the different shape and by the beard of 
their mandibles. Their posterior tibize also want the corbicula and pecten 
that distinguish the individuals of the other sex, and their pouric: planta 
have no auricle. We learn from Reaumur that the male humble-bees are 
not an idle race, but work in concert with the rest to repair any damage or 
derangement that may befal the common habitation.? 
The workers, which are the first-fruits of the queen-mother’s vernal par- 
turition, assist her, as soon as they are excluded from the pupa, in her 
various labours. To them also is committed the construction of the waxen 
vault that covers and defends the nest. When any individual larva has 
spun its cocoon and assumed the pupa, the workers remove all the wax 
from it; and as soon as it has attained to its perfect state, which takes 
lace in about five days, the cocoons are used to hold honey or pollen. 
hen the bees discharge the honey into them upon their return from their 
excursions, they open their mouths and contract their bodies, which occa- 
sions the honey to fall into the reservoir. Sixty of these honey-pots are 
occasionally found in a single nest, and more than forty are sometimes filled 
1 Tt should be here observed that, besides the proper occupants of some humble- 
bees’ nests, there are occasionally met with in them individuals of another genus of 
the same family, so closely resembling them as to be often confounded with them, 
which, being unprovided with the usual polliniferous organs, are supposed to be, in 
their larva state, parasitic inhabitants of the nest. ‘This genus, which includes Apis 
Vupestris I. &c., has been named Apathus by Mr. Newman, Psithyrus by M. de St. 
argeau, and Pseudo-Bombus by Mr, Stephens. In like manner, the exotic genus 
Chrysantheda is supposed to be parasitic on the metallic Huglosse (Hist. of Ins. by 
Swainson and Shuckard, 169. Westrciode Mod, Class. of Ins. ii. 281.), 
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