APIS. 
357 
shape five times as large as the drone cells, and are 
attached laterally to the edges of the comb in a vertical 
position, with the narrowest part, which is the orifice, 
hanging downwards. In the forming of these cells the 
workers are very lavish of their wax, making the coats of 
them thick and opaque, and they are irregularly rough 
outside, but within very smoothly polished. Just as 
the construction of these cells intervenes irregularly with 
the formation of the cells of the drones, so does the 
queen intermit at intervals the laying of the drone eggs 
to deposit occasionally an egg in one of the royal cells, 
which are not usually completed at the time she com¬ 
mences laying them, but are finished afterwards, even 
during the time the larva is growing. This provision 
seems to be made for the earliest development of the 
young queens after the drones come forth, with the pos¬ 
sible prevision that the sooner all of these young queens 
are fertilized that are needful for the requirements of 
the swarms that the hive may throw off, the sooner will 
the hive be rid of the incumbrance and the consumption 
of stores caused by the drones. The transformations of 
the queens take place more rapidly than the others, for 
in sixteen days they are completed, of which three are 
occupied in hatching the egg, and for five they are feeding 
as larvae, and in that time attain their full growth; the 
cell is then closed in with a waxen cover by the workers, 
and the full-fed larva within is occupied in spinning its 
cocoon, which it takes twenty-four hours to accomplish. 
This cocoon is unlike that of the drones and workers, 
both of which completely enclose the pupa, but the royal 
larva only forms so much of a cocoon as will cover the 
head and thorax, and by which imperfection she un¬ 
consciously facilitates her destruction by her rivals in 
