of the loss of their stores. The tenderest mother could not watch over her children with more affection, nor supply them with nourishment more impartially, or in greater abundance. At the same time it is done without waste, for the quantity is so proportioned to the demand, that none of it remains in the cells where the larvæ undergo their transformation to the nymph state."[1]
At the moment of being hatched, the insect presents the appearance of a small straight worm, composed of several ventral wings. It quickly grows so as to touch the sides of the cell, when it contracts its body, and coils itself into a semicircular figure, and continues enlarging its dimensions till the extremities meet, and form a complete ring. In this state it continues, receiving food from its nurses for five days, when it ceases to eat; its supplies are, of course, cut off, and the bees proceed to seal up the cell with a waxen cover, of a brownish colour, and slightly convex. Thus left to itself, the larva begins spinning around its body, after the manner of the silk-worm, a fine silken film or cocoon, which completely envelops it. "The silken thread employed in forming this covering," Kirby and Spence tell us, "proceeds from the middle part of the under lip, and is in fact composed of two threads, gummed together, as they issue from the two adjoining orifices of the spinner." In the formation of its cocoon, the larva occupies thirty-six hours, and in three days after, it is metamorphosed into a nymph or pupa—terms ap-
- ↑ Traité des Abeilles.
