PART II. THE FEEDING OF HONEYBEE LARVAE. 
Page. 
Introduction 25 
Methods 25 
Nurse bees 27 
Inspection, type A 27 
Inspection, type B 28 
Nursing 28 
Number of visits 29 
CONTENTS. 
Page. 
Nurse bees — Contd. : 
Time spent in nursing 29 
Change in feeding behavior 30 
The labor of the nurse bees 33 
Summary :'»4 
Tables 5 to 7 35 
INTRODUCTION. 
The larvae of most bees are supplied with a mass of food consist- 
ing of a mixture of pollen and honey, which is put in place before 
the egg is laid. The larva 3 of the honeybee, on the other hand, are 
fed at frequent intervals during the period of larval life. This be- 
havior of the honeybee involves the services of nurse bees in caring 
for the larvae. The nurse bees are always worker bees, usually 
those less than a month old. When worker bees are acting as nurse 
bees they take honey (or nectar) and pollen from adjacent cells of 
the comb and from these two materials elaborate the food on which 
the larvse live and grow to maturity. 
The food given to the youngest larvae is a grayish-white paste- 
like material which is placed in the cell beside the larva. For 
older larvae the prepared food is mostly fed directly to the larvae. 
To supply food to a larva the nurse bee must enter the cell head 
first, so that it is impossible for one to see what occurs in the cell 
while the nurse bee is so situated. Because of the fact that the larva 
is wholly hidden while the worker is attending it, one can deter- 
mine only the total time spent in this work, without being able to 
divide the time according to the various actions which may occupy 
the nurse bee during this activity. Attention was attracted to this 
phase of the feeding problem by the observation that nurse bees 
spend considerably more time in cells containing well-developed 
larvae than they do in cells containing eggs or young larvae. To get 
accurate data on the inequality of the time spent in feeding the 
present observations were begun. 
As explained in Part I of this bulletin, Mr. Sturtevant was at 
the same time engaged in determining the rate of growth of the 
worker larvae. His results showed such a striking correlation with 
those obtained for the time spent by the nurse bees in feeding that it 
was decided to cooperate in determining the correlation of the 
weight of larval food contained within the cell during each day 
of the larval period with the weights of the larvae for each clay. 
These results have been incorporated in Part I. 
METHODS. 
All observations were made on a colony of bees in a dark room, 
using artificial light. The hive used was especially designed to ex- 
clude all light from the brood nest except that used by the observer. 
