PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



Ill 



The larvae of bees, though without feet, are not altogether 

 without motion. They advance from their first station at the 

 bottom of the cell, as I before hinted, in a spiral direction. 

 This movement, for the first three days, is so slow as to be 

 scarcely perceptible ; but after this it is more easily discerned. 

 The animal now makes two entire revolutions in about an 

 hour and three quarters ; and when the period of its meta- 

 morphosis arrives, it is scarcely more than two lines from the 

 mouth of the cell. Its attitude, which is always the same, is 

 a strong curve. 1 This occasions the inhabitant of a horizontal 

 cell to be always perpendicular to the horizon, and that of a 

 vertical one to be parallel with it. 



A most remarkable difference, as I lately observed, takes 

 place in spinning their cocoons, — - the grubs of workers and 

 drones spinning complete cocoons, while those that are spun 

 by the females are incomplete, or open at the lower end, and 

 covering only the head and trunk and the first segment of the 

 abdomen. This variation is probably occasioned by the dif- 

 ferent forms of the cells : for, if a female larva be placed in a 

 worker's cell, it will spin a complete cocoon ; and, vice versa, 

 if a worker larva be placed in a royal cell, its cocoon will be 

 incomplete. 2 No provision of the Great Author of nature is 

 in vain. In the present instance, the fact which we are con- 

 sidering is of great importance to the bees ; for, were the 

 females wholly covered by the thick texture of a cocoon, their 

 destruction by their rival competitors for the throne could 

 not so readily be accomplished; they either would not be 

 able to reach them with their stings, or the stings might be 

 detained by their barbs in the meshes of the cocoon, so that 

 they would not be able to disengage them. On the use of this 

 instinctive and murderous hatred of their rivals I shall soon 

 enlarge. 



When our young prisoners are ready to emerge, they do 

 not, like the ants, require the assistance of the workers, but 

 themselves eat through the cocoon and the cell that incloses 

 it. By a wise provision, which prevents the injury or de- 

 struction of a cell, they generally make their way through 



i Schirach, t. 3. f. 10. 



I 3 



2 Huber, i. 224. 



