BOMBUS. 
313 
receptacle sufficiently large for her first gatherings of 
pollen and honey, whereon to deposit her first eggs, and 
to form a waxen cruse or two to contain the honey re¬ 
quisite for the nest operations of keeping these masses 
moist enough for the nurture of the larvae. The ma¬ 
terial of these pots although called wax is not pro¬ 
perly so, but is an agglutination of collected vegetable 
matter, for it is not plastic to the fingers like wax, and 
it burns, leaving a carbonaceous residuum very attractive 
to moisture. The larvae hatched from the eggs now 
deposited produce the first neuters, which spin a cocoon 
wherein they rapidly undergo their transformations. 
They are, in the first instance, aided to emerge from 
their silken cot by the parent gnawing off its top, but 
subsequently this duty is performed, as the family in¬ 
creases, by the neuters then developed. The young 
bee, on emerging from its cocoon, is not thoroughly 
hardened in its integument, and its pubescence also 
acquires by degrees only its proper colouring; all this 
is not long in being effected, but, until they are tho¬ 
roughly able to fly forth, they continue to be fed by 
their elder sisterhood, for the neuters are properly ab¬ 
ortive females. Males, and further productive females 
are produced later in the spring, and are smaller than 
the normal sizes of those sexes ; the autumnal brood, con¬ 
sisting also of males and females, again resume the full 
size of the complete insect, and it is these females which, 
after impregnation, hibernate and reappear in the fol¬ 
lowing early spring to be each the parent of a new 
progeny. The population of these nests varies consi¬ 
derably in the several species: in some, as in that of 
Bombus terrestris , there are more than two hundred, 
and in that of B. senilis there are about a hundred 
