Wasps, Bees, and Ants 
5 2 5 
capped, the opening being at the bottom of the hanging, nut-shaped cell, 
and in only seven days more the fully developed bee issues. This bee is a 
queen. Very rarely a worker and not a queen issues from a queen-cell. 
That is, a larva hatching from a fertilized egg laid by the queen in a small 
hexagonal cell, if fed bee-jelly for two or three days and then pollen and honey, 
will develop into a worker; that larva from the same egg, if fed bee-jelly 
all its life, and reared in a large roomy cell, will develop into a queen. The 
difference between a queen honey-bee and a worker honey-bee, both struc¬ 
tural and physiological, are, as already pointed out, conspicuous. The 
influence of a varying food-supply is something mysteriously potent, and 
this case of the queen bee gives great comfort to those biologists who believe 
that the external or extrinsic factors surrounding an animal during develop¬ 
ment have much influence in determining its outcome. 
As there is by immemorial honey-bee tradition but one queen in a com¬ 
munity at one time, when new queens issue from the great cells something 
has to happen. This may be one of three things: either the old and 
new queens battle to death, and it is believed that in such battles only does 
a queen bee ever use her sting, or the workers interfere and kill either the 
old or new queen by “balling” her (gathering in a tight suffocating mass 
about her), or either old (usually old) or new queen leaves the hive with a 
swarm, and a new community is founded. If several new queens are to 
issue, the workers usually, by thickening from the outside the walls of one 
or more of the cells, compel the issuing to be successive and not simultaneous. 
This results in a series of royal battles, or a series of swarmings, or a com¬ 
bination of the two. A queen ready to issue from a cell makes a curious- 
piping audible some yards from the hive, which is answered by a louder 
piping, a trumpeting, from the old queen. At these times there is great 
excitement in the hive, as indeed there is during all of the queen-raising 
season. 
The swarming out, it is apparent, does not break up the old community; 
in fact only accident, or the successful attacks of such insidious enemies, 
as the bee-moth, and various contagious diseases, break up the parent 
colony. In this respect is to be noted an important difference between, 
the other social bees and wasps with their communities annually destroyed 
and refounded, and the honey-bee with its persistent one. Of course workers 
die and so do drones and queens. The tireless workers which hatch and 
labor in the spring and summer months rarely live more than six or eight 
weeks, while the workers born in the late autumn and remaining quietly 
in the shelter of the hive through the winter live for several months. Queens 
live, usually, if no accident befalls, two or three years; an age of four or 
five years is occasionally attained. Most of the drones in each community 
either die naturally before winter comes or are killed by the workers. Feeble 
