PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



123 



queens that are to lead the swarms. After the cells are 

 covered in, one of their first employments is to remove here 

 and there a portion of the wax from their surface, so as to 

 render it unequal ; and immediately before the last metamor- 

 phosis takes place, the walls are so thin that all the motions 

 of the inclosed pupa are perceptible through them. On the 

 seventh day the part covering the head and trunk of the 

 young female, if I may so speak, is almost entirely unwaxed. 

 This operation of the bees facilitates her exit, and probably 

 renders the evaporation of the superabundant fluids of the 

 body of the pupa more easy. 



You will conclude, perhaps, when all things are thus pre- 

 pared for the coming forth of the inclosed female, that she 

 will quit her cell at the regular period, which is seven days : 

 — but you would be mistaken. Were she indeed permitted 

 to pursue her own inclinations, this would be the case : but 

 here the bees show how much they are guided in their 

 instinct by circumstances and the wants of their society ; for 

 did the new queen leave her cell, she would immediately 

 attack and destroy those in the other cells; a proceeding 

 which they permit, as I have before stated, when they only 

 want a successor to a defunct or a lost sovereign. As soon, 

 therefore, as the workers perceive — which the transparency 

 of the cell permits them to do — that the young queen has 

 cut circularly through her cocoon, they immediately solder 

 the cleft up with some particles of wax, and so keep her a 

 prisoner against her will. Upon this, as if to complain of 

 such treatment, she emits a distinct sound, which excites no 

 pity in the breasts of her subjects, who detain her a prisoner 

 two days longer than nature has assigned for her confinement. 

 In the interim, she sometimes thrusts her tongue through the 

 cleft she has made, drawing it in and out till she is noticed 

 by the workers, to make them understand that she is in want 

 of food. Upon perceiving this they give her honey, till her 

 hunger being satisfied she draws her tongue back — upon 

 which they stop the orifice with wax. 1 



You may think it perhaps extraordinary that the workers 



1 Huber, i. 256. 



