NATURAL INCREASE. 
155 
The most advanced queen, having gained her 
liberty, and increased in strength during some few 
hours, manifests an anxiety to seek out and destroy 
her immature sisters ; and, should the bees not desire 
to send out a second swarm (technically a ‘^cast”), she 
is permitted to visit the royal cells, and assist the 
workers in tearing open their sides, just above the 
leathery cocoon, as at A', when the helpless prin- 
cesses are butchered, some of them at least, in 
certain cases, by thrusts from her sting, the utilitarian 
spirit of the workers impelling them to drink up 
the spilt ‘‘blue’’ blood of the nymphs ere their 
bodies are thrown from the hive. 
The honey-flow continuing, and the population in- 
creased by all the hatching since the departure of the 
swarm, a further desire to colonise commonly yet 
exists, when the bees somewhat rudely check the 
right royal impulse of undying hatred to a rival, by 
keeping back the would-be murderess, as well as 
preventing those that are nearly as advanced as 
herself from leaving their cells, upon which they 
thickly crowd. Each of these princesses cuts her 
cocoon, the same as did the now free sister ; but the 
bees put wax over the joint all round, except at one 
spot, where an opening is left, through which the 
tongue of the prisoner is now and again extended, 
that the workers may supply her wants. Whether 
the aspirant for queenship feels hatred, indignation, 
or fear, the writer does not know, and he thinks it 
unfavourable to progress that poetical fancy — almost 
poetical licence — has been mixed up so frequently 
with the facts he is now endeavouring to describe ; 
