LETTERS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 61 
occasioned by the form of the cells, for if a female 
larva be placed in a worker's cell, it will spin a 
complete cocoon, and if a worker grub be put 
in a royal cell, its cocoon will be incomplete. 
No provision of the great Author of nature is in 
vain. As the first queen who comes out must 
kill all the other female grubs, it would be ex- 
tremely difficult for her to do it if they were 
quite covered. When the prisoners are ready 
to emerge, they do not, like the ants, require 
assistance, but eat through their cocoon and cell, 
generally through the top. They now enter on 
a more interesting scene, in which the display of 
their wonderful and numerous instincts exceeds 
the most vaunted products of human skill and 
wisdom. 
First, we must speak of the queen mother, as 
incomparably the most important. The first mo- 
ments of her life are filled with anxiety, warfare, 
and peril, for she will bear no rival near her, and 
there are generally from sixteen to twenty royal 
cells in a hive, while only one is suffered to live, 
except when another queen is wanted to lead a 
swarm, in which case the workers take proper pre- 
cautions. Soon after the queen's birth she visits 
the royal cells, still inhabited, and darting with 
fury on the first she meets, by means of her jaws 
