124 
GLAND STRUCTURE. 
Planta’s, we think, conclusively proves that the food is 
not a secretion, and that the nurses have the power of 
altering its constituents as they may require for the 
different bees. 
It is easy to understand how former observers 
have gone wrong. If all the food taken from worker 
and drone cells over four days is mixed up, of course 
pollen will be found, and this misled Leuckart and 
those who have followed him. Dr. Planta is the first 
who has made a separate analysis of the food on 
different days, and of the different bees, and he is also 
the first who has by his experiments corroborated 
Schonfeld’s opinion. 
Royal jelly is, therefore, chyle food, and this is 
also most likely the food given to the queen bee. 
Schonfeld (148) has also recently shown that drones 
are likewise dependent upon this food, given to them 
by workers, and that if it is withheld they die after 
three days in the presence of abundance of honey. 
This, he thinks, accounts for the quiet way in which 
the drones perish at the end of the season. 
It will now be easily understood that if weaning of 
the worker larvae does not take place at the proper time, 
and that the first nourishing food is continued too long, 
it may be the cause of developing the ovaries, and so 
produce fertile workers, just as the more nourishing 
food continued during the whole of the larval existence 
in the case of a queen develops her ovaries, or even 
in the absence of a queen the feeding of workers on 
this rich food may tend to have the same effect. This, 
then, is the solution of royal jelly and brood food. 
