CLASS I. INSECTA: ORDER 3. HYMENOPTER A. 559 
majestic manner, and is always accompanied by a guard of tAvelve workers, an office taken in 
turn, and never intermitted. The guards clear the way for the queen, and display the utmost 
veneration toward her. From the time she begins to lay eggs, she becomes for the whole colony 
an object of the utmost respect, and she permits no rival in the hive. Should one accidentally 
appear, a mortal combat ensues, which terminates fatally for one, the other remaining sovereign 
of the hive. So long as she is shut up in her habitation, she lays no eggs ; but should fine 
weather appear, she leaves the cell and the hive a few days after her birth, and ascends in the 
air out of sight, with the males. But she soon returns to the hive, and commences laying eggs 
forty-six hours afterward. These eggs she deposits in cells already prepared for their use. 
During the first summer, these eggs are not numerous, and they become merely working bees. 
During winter she ceases to lay eggs, but so soon as spring-time returns, her fecundity becomes 
extreme, and in three weeks she lays more than twelve thousand eggs. Toward the eleventh 
month of her existence she begins to lay eggs which produce the drokes, or males, along with 
others which belong to the working class ; those of the females come a little later. In three or 
four days after the laying, the eggs are fully hatched, and there comes forth a little larva of a 
whitish color, which, having no feet, is helpless ; but the working bees provide amply for it, and 
furnish it with a sort of bouillie, of which the qualities vary with the age and sex of the indi- 
vidual for which it is intended ; and at the moment of the transformation of the larva into a 
nymph, they shut it into its cell, closing it in with a covering of wax. Five days after the birth 
of the larva of a working bee, its nurses inclose it thus in its cell. It now spins around its body 
a web of silk, and at the end of three days changes into a nymph. Finally, after having remained 
under this form during seven days and a half, it undergoes its last metamorphosis. The males 
do not attain their perfect state before the twenty-first day from the birth of the larva, while the 
females undergo their last metamorphosis on the thirteenth day. By vaiying the food given to 
the larvae, the working bees, or nurses, can change them from working bees, or neuters, into 
females or queens. Should the queen bee be lost, the working bees immediately set to work and 
break down several ordinary cells to convert them into a royal cell. The larva of one of these 
cells is now fed so as to become a queen bee. When a young queen bee has finished her meta- 
morphosis, and gnawed through the covering of the cell, a great agitation may be observed in 
the hive. On one side may be seen working bees, which strive, as it were, to retain her in the 
royal cell by shutting up all access to it ; on the other hand may be seen the old queen bee 
approaching to endeavor to destroy her, in which attempt she is obstructed by hosts of working 
bees, which endeavor to arrest her progress, but make 
no attack on her. At last, as if in a passion, she quits 
the hive, and with her the greater part of the working 
bees and males over whom she presided. The young 
bees, too feeble to leave, remain with the young queen bee, 
which now becomes the sovereign of a new colony, oc- 
cupying the seat of the original one. The hive which 
has left with the old queen remain together, and form a 
new society, which, recommencing again all the labors we 
have just described, furnishes, after a certain time, a second 
swarm, whose emigration is determined by the same causes 
as those which give rise to the first. A hive gives off 
several swarms during a season, but the last are always 
feeble. The colony sometimes breaks up on the death of 
the queen bee, the attacks of enemies, or the weakness of 
the swarm ; but the bees thus dispersed seek shelter in 
other hives, where they are uniformly destroyed by the {ifo- 
prietors of the hive, for no strange bee is admitted into a 
hive in which it was not born. Sometimes, also, a whole colony attacks another, and robs it of 
its stores of provisions. 
This is a mere outline of the more common proceedings of these wonderful creatures. There 
CKLLS OF HONEY-BEES. 
