578 Insects. 
the workers. In two or three days the eggs are hatched, 
when the Neuters nurse the young grubs, whom they 
feed most tenderly with bee-bread and honey. After 
twenty-one days, the young Bees are able to form cells 
with such indefatigable activity that they will then do 
more in one week than during all the rest of the year. 
No more than one Queen is ever permitted to inhabit a 
hive. When a young Queen is about to be hatched, the 
old one leads away a swarm from the old colony to form 
a new one. If the Queen die or is lost to the hive by 
accident, and there be no young Queens in the royal cells, 
the Bees can repair their loss. They choose a grub of 
the Neuter species, enlarge its cell by adding to it three 
or four adjacent ones, feed the young grub on royal food, 
and it is then developed into a Queen. Sometimes there 
are Bees who, less laborious than the others, support 
themselves by pillaging the hives of the rest; upon 
which a battle ensues between the industrious and the 
despoiling insects. Their foes are the wasp, the hornet, 
and various kinds of birds. 
The Bee collects the honey by means of its proboscis, 
or trunk, which is a most astonishing piece of mecha- 
nism, consisting of more than twenty parts. Entering the 
hive, the insect disgorges the honey into cells, for winter 
subsistence ; or else presents it to the labouring Bees. 
The combs of cells formed by these industrious in- 
sects are constructed with an instinctive ingenuity which 
must always be regarded as one of the most marvellous 
things in nature. Each comb consists of two sets of 
hexagonal cells placed back to back, and not only do 
the insects adopt this form which enables them to con- 
struct the greatest number of cells of the requisite 
size within the smallest possible space, and with the 
least possible amount of material, but each cell on one 
side of the comb is placed opposite to the junction of 
three cells on the opposite side, so that its centre may 
be deepened without interfering with the latter, the 
three diamond-shaped pieces forming the bottom of each 
cell belonging to three distinct cells of the opposite side 
of the comb. By all these contrivances the Bees manage 
to get the greatest possible amount of accommodation in 
