MAY. 
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divided into smaller groups; they are always covered over with the leaf 
or paper formed of worked pollen, and supplied with liquid honey, which 
they must absorb through some mouth or opening at the conical front 
extremity of the body, though it is not perceptible to the naked eye. 
They subsist in this manner, from three to five in a cluster, till they 
are fit to undergo their metamorphosis into a bee; the full-fed, white, 
fleshy, oval-shaped larvae or grubs, without any external organs, are 
then transferred (as I believe) to the cells or cocoons in which they are 
to grow into young bees. These cells are made of a whitish material, 
somewhat between silk and leather, and covered over at the bottom and 
sides with a kind of glue, which unites them into a comb; on opening 
one of those recently formed, the larvae may be found just as 
it was in its last stage, in the small groups, incapable of forming 
the covering which surrounds it; for it is without the spinning appa¬ 
ratus with which the spider makes her web, or hands and feet to enable 
it to use such instrument—in fact, the larvae are in the state of babies 
wrapt in swaddling clothes by their nurses. 
The cocoons are roughly glued together in an irregular manner, 
chiefly in a vertical position, though some lean to a horizontal one, 
frequently in two or three tiers or layers (for they never serve two sets 
of larvae) ; they are destitute of the beautiful regularity to be found in 
the comb of the hive bee, but always placed so that the head of the 
young bee lies uppermost, and that it can break its way out from the 
top of its cell, although this fact has been gravely denied by learned 
authors, who appear therein to have mistaken the ways of the wasp for 
those of the humble bee. The bees earliest hatched are always neuters, 
and these carry on the preliminary works of the nest; towards the end 
of the season are produced the males and the females that perpetuate 
the species ; the cells of these last are somewhat larger than those of 
the males and neuters; there are also hatched in the nests of some 
species three or four very small neuters, so small compared with the 
rest as to appear abortive or imperfect. The hortorum produces them 
about the size of hive bees, and a variety of muscorum has them as 
small as house-flies. The comparative difference in size between males 
and females in some species (as hortorum and terrestris) is not very 
great, the male being somewhat smaller as well as of a more slender 
figure than the female, and distinguishable from the latter by its longer 
antennae or horns. With other species, as sylvarum, muscorum, and 
lapidaria, they are in size so disproportionate to the large females, that 
one would not suppose them capable of effecting the work of fecundation. 
With regard to the number of females produced in a nest, I have found as 
many as six full grown ones, and I believe the males are usually pro¬ 
duced in corresponding numbers. One nest, however, that was shown to 
me contained male bees only ; the females evidently require some time to 
attain their full size, and even the neuters do not leave their cells in a 
perfect state, like those of the hive bee, but may be observed to increase 
in size after they begin to fly about. 
The natural history of the humble bee cannot well be brought to a 
close without a few remarks on its peaceable and harmless nature. 
Though armed with a long and powerful sting, it never attempts to use 
