GO LETTERS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 
terial ; the situation is also different, being ver- 
tical instead of horizontal, with the mouth down- 
wards. 
The society of a hive of bees, besides the young 
brood, consists of one female or queen ; several 
hundreds of males or drones, and many thousand 
workers. The body of the queen is much longer 
than the others. The drone is quite the reverse 
in shape, being short, thick, and clumsy. The 
workers are oblong, and divided into two orders, 
the wax-makers and nurses. They are all im- 
perfect females like the ants. Sixteen days is 
the time assigned to a queen for her existence 
in the preparatory states, before she emerges 
from her cell: three she remains in the egg; 
when hatched, she continues feeding, or rather 
being fed, five more; when covered in, she begins 
to spin her cocoon, which is open at one end for 
a reason I shall presently give you. She is one 
day in doing this; she then reposes two days 
and sixteen hours, and then assumes the pupa or 
chrysalis, in which state she remains four days 
and eight hours. Four days more are required to 
bring the workers to perfection. There is a dif- 
ference in the shape of their cocoons, for workers 
c nd drones make complete ones, while the queen's 
is open at the lower end, and this is probably 
