46 
THE niVE AND IIONET-BEE. 
“ Such are the respective stages of the working-bee 
those of tlie royal bee are as follows: she passes three 
days in the egg, and is five a worm ; the workers then 
close her cell, and she immediately begins spinning her 
cocoon, which occupies her twenty-four hours. On the 
tenth and eleventh days, and a part of the twelfth, as if 
exhausted by her labor, she remains in complete repose. 
Then she passes four days and a part of the fifth as a 
nymph. It is on the sixteenth, day, therefore, that the 
perfect state of queen is attained. 
“The drone passes three days in the egg, and six and a 
half as a worm, and changes into a perfect insect on the 
twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day after the egg is laid. 
“ r lhe development of each species likewise proceeds 
more slowly when the colonies are weak, or the air cool. 
Dr. Hunter has observed that the eggs, worms, and 
nymphs all require a heat above 70° of Fahrenheit for 
their evolution. Both drones and workers, on emerging 
from the cell, are at first gray, soft, and comparatively 
helpless, so that some time elapses before they take wing. 
“The workers and drones spin complete cocoons, or 
inclose themselves on every side, while the royal larvae 
construct only imperfect cocoons , open behind, and envel¬ 
oping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdo¬ 
men ; and Iluber concludes, without any hesitation, that 
the final cause of this is, that they may be exposed to the 
mortal sting of the first hatched queen, whose instinct 
leads her instantly to seek the destruction of those who 
would soon become her rivals. 
“ If the royal larvae spun complete cocoons, the stings 
of the queens seeking to destroy their rivals might be so 
entangled in their meshes that they could not be disen¬ 
gaged. ‘ Such,’ says Huber, ‘ is the instinctive enmity of 
young queens to each other, that I have seen one of them, 
