APIS. 
347 
another swarm on the following year, which perhaps she 
does in those cases of excessive fertility where her abun¬ 
dance is estimated at one hundred thousand, when by 
her sole individual capacity she populates three hives. 
In the more usual and ordinary case of her teeming with 
about seventy thousand, or fewer, she evidently heads 
but one swarm. With the described rapidity of the pro¬ 
duction of the cells, although the majority are store cells 
and not brood cells, conjunctively with her prolific lay¬ 
ing, the population of the hive rapidly increases, which, 
added to the large original colony, will enable it in a 
propitious year to throw off a swarm of its own; but 
ordinarily she does not again lay drone eggs and royal 
eggs until the following season. The period at which to 
do this is taught her by the condition of the hive, as 
urgent for relief to its oppressive population by an exodus. 
The drone eggs are then laid, and are speedily succeeded 
by the laying of the royal eggs, so that the males of the 
season and the new queens may be hatched almost simul¬ 
taneously, the drones slightly preceding the develop¬ 
ment of the queens. As soon as the egg of a worker 
is hatched, which, by means of the high temperature, is 
effected in four days after the laying, it, from its birth, 
is sedulously attended by the bees called nurse-bees. 
The little vermicle is very voracious and is heedfully 
supplied by these careful attendants, when it has con¬ 
sumed the quantity of bee bread already deposited in 
the cell by some of these nurses as soon as the egg was 
laid. This bee bread consists of pollen, taken from the 
cells by the nurses, where it is garnered for the pur¬ 
pose, being therein mixed with a slight quantity of 
honey. This, in masticating, the nurses intermingle 
with some secretion of their own, which gives it a sort 
