64 LETTERS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 
confusion increases till a swarm leaves the hive, 
which she either precedes or follows, like a 
sovereign driven forth by her rebellious sub- 
jects to seek a new kingdom. The bees in- 
variably let out the oldest female from her cell 
first, and she becomes the soul of all their actions 
and centre of their instincts, though so long their 
prisoner. If they are deprived of her, or the 
means of replacing her, they lose all their activity 
and become quite idle. You will no doubt ask 
me what are the means of replacing her without 
a royal cell, and I will relate to you in answer 
one of the most astonishing, and I believe un- 
paralleled facts in nature. 
If the bees are deprived of their queen, and 
are supplied with the part of the honeycomb 
containing only the grubs of the workers, they 
select one or more to be educated as queens, 
which by having a royal cell erected for them, 
and being fed with the royal jelly (a particular 
kind which is exclusively given to queens), only 
for two days, come out complete queens, with 
their form and instincts entirely changed, though 
if they had remained in a common cell they 
would have been only workers ! What shall we 
say to this ? How can a larger and warmer 
cell, a different and more pungent kind of food, 
