INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



405 



hunger, but that it may undergo in their stomach an elabora- 

 tion fitting it for the food of the grubs; and another to 

 regurgitate it when duly concocted, and to administer it to 

 their charge, proportioning the supply to the age and condition 

 of the recipients. A third informs them when the young 

 grubs have attained their full growth, and directs them to 

 cover their cells with a waxen lid, convex in the male cells, 

 but nearly flat in those of workers ; and by a fourth, as soon 

 as the young bees have burst into day, they are impelled to 

 clean out the deserted tenements and to make them ready for 

 new occupants. 



Numerous as are the instincts I have already enumerated, 

 the list must yet include those connected with that mysterious 

 principle which binds the working-bees of a hive to their 

 queen ; the singular imprisonment in which they retain the 

 young queens that are to lead off a swarm, until their wings 

 be sufficiently expanded to enable them to fly the moment 

 they are at liberty, gradually paring away the waxen wall 

 that confines them to their cell to an extreme thinness, and 

 only suffering it to be broken down at the precise moment 

 required ; the attention with which, in these circumstances, 

 they feed the imprisoned queen by frequently putting honey 

 upon her proboscis, protruded from a small orifice in the lid of 

 her cell ; the watchfulness with which, when at the period 

 of swarming more queens than one are required, they place a 

 guard over the cells of those undisclosed, to preserve them 

 from the jealous fury of their excluded rivals ; the exquisite 

 calculation with which they invariably release the oldest queens 

 the first from their confinement ; the singular love of monar- 

 chical dominion, by which, when two queens in other circum- 

 stances are produced, they are led to impel them to combat 

 until one is destroyed; the ardent devotion which binds 

 them to the fate and fortunes of the survivor ; the distraction 

 which they manifest at her loss, and their resolute determin- 

 ation not to accept of any stranger until an interval has elapsed 

 sufficiently long to allow of no chance of the return of their 

 rightful sovereign ; and (to omit a further enumeration) the 

 obedience which in the utmost noise and confusion they show 

 to her well-known hum. 



D D 3 



