PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



97 



The large females, like the female wasps, are the original 

 founders of their republics. They are often so large, that by 

 the side of the small ones or the workers, which in every other 

 respect they exactly resemble, they look like giants opposed 

 to pigmies. They are excluded from the pupa in the autumn ; 

 and pair in that season, with males produced from the eggs of 

 the small females. They pass the winter under ground, and, 

 as appears from an observation of M. P. Huber, in a particular 

 apartment, separate from the nest, and rendered warm by a 

 carpeting of moss and grass, but without any supply of food. 

 Early in the spring (for they make their first appearance as 

 soon as the catkins of the sallows and willows are in flower), 

 like the female wasps, they lay the foundations of a new 

 colony without the assistance of any neuters, which all perish 

 before the winter. In some instances, however, if a conjecture 

 of M. de la Billardiere be correct, these creatures have an as- 

 sistant assigned to them. He says, at this season (the ap- 

 proach of winter) he found in the nest of Bombus Sylvarum 

 some old females and workers, whose wings were fastened 

 together to retain them in the nest by hindering them from 

 flying ; these wings in each individual were fastened together 

 at the extremity, by means of some very brown wax applied 

 above and below. 1 This he conceives to be a precaution taken 

 by the other bees to oblige these individuals to remain in the 

 nest, and take care of the brood that was next year to renew 

 the population of the colony. I feel, however, great hesitation 

 in admitting this conjecture, founded upon an insulated and 

 perhaps an accidental fact. For, in the first place, the young 

 females that come forth in the autumn, and not the old ones, 

 are the founders of new colonies, and their instinct directs 

 them to fulfil the great laws of their nature without such 

 compulsion ; and in the next, the workers are never known to 

 survive the cold of winter. 



The employment of a large female, besides the care of the 

 young brood before described, and the collecting of honey and 

 pollen, is principally the constructing of the cells in which her 

 eggs are to be laid; which M. P. Huber seems to think, 



VOL. II. 



1 Mtmoires du Museum, &c. i. 55. 

 H 



