318 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



and then, having deposited six or seven eggs, carefully closes 

 the orifice and minutest interstices with wax. But this is 

 not the whole of her task. By a strange instinct, which, 

 however, may be necessary to keep the population within due 

 bounds, the workers, while she is occupied in laying her eggs, 

 endeavour to seize them from her, and, if they succeed, 

 greedily devour them. To prevent this violence, her utmost 

 activity is scarcely adequate ; and it is only after she has 

 again and again beat off the murderous intruders and pursued 

 them to the furthest verge of the nest, that she succeeds in 

 her operation. When finished, she is still under the necessity 

 of closely guarding the cell, which the gluttonous workers 

 would otherwise tear open, and devour the eggs. This duty 

 she performs for six or eight hours with the vigilance of an 

 Argus, at the end of which time they lose their taste for tliis 

 food, and will not touch it even when presented to them. 

 Here the labours of the mother cease, and are succeeded by 

 those of the workers. These know the precise hour when 

 the grubs have consumed their stock of food, and from that 

 time to their maturity regularly feed them with either honey 

 or pollen, introduced in their proboscis through a small hole 

 in the cover of the cell opened for the occasion and then care- 

 fully closed. 



They are equally assiduous in another operation. As the 

 grubs increase in size, the cell which contained them becomes 

 too small, and in their exertions to be more at ease they split 

 its thin sides. To fill up these breaches as fast as they occur 

 with a patch of wax is the office of the workers, who are 

 constantly on the watch to discover when their services are 

 wanted ; and thus the cells daily increase in size, in a way 

 which to an observer ignorant of the process seems very ex- 

 traordinary. 



The last duty of these affectionate foster-parents is to 

 assist the young bees in cutting open the cocoons which have 

 enclosed them in the state of pupce. A previous labour 

 however must not be omitted. The workers adopt similar 

 measures with the hive-bee for maintaining the young 

 pupae concealed in these cocoons in a genial temperature. In 



