en bees enter these cells when nothing could
attract them. The cells contained neither eggs nor honey, nor did they
need further completion. Therefore the workers repaired thither only to
enjoy some moments of repose. Indeed, they were fifteen or twenty
minutes so perfectly motionless, that had not the dilatation of the
rings shewed their respiration, we might have concluded them dead. The
queen also sometimes penetrates the large cells of the males, and
continues very long motionless in them. Her position prevents the bees
from paying their full homage to her, yet even then the workers do not
fail to form a circle around her, and brush the part of her belly that
remains exposed.

The drones do not enter the cells while reposing, but cluster together
on the combs; and sometimes retain this position eighteen or twenty
hours without the slightest motion.

As it is important, in many experiments, to know the exact time that the
three species of bees exist before assuming their ultimate form, I shall
here subjoin my own observations on the point.

The worm of workers passes three days in the egg, five in the vermicular
state, and then the bees close up its cell with a wax covering. The worm
now begins spinning its coccoon, in which operation thirty-six hours are
consumed. In three days, it changes to a nymph, and passes six days in
this form. It is only on the twentieth day of its existence, counting
from the moment the egg is laid, that it attains the fly state.

The royal worm also passes three days in the egg, and is five a worm;
the bees then close its cell; and it immediately begins spinning the
coccoon, which occupies twenty-four hours. The tenth and eleventh day it
remains in complete repose, and even sixteen hours of the twelfth. Then
the transformation to a nymph takes place, in which state four days and
a third are passed. Thus it is not before the sixteenth day that the
perfect state of queen is attained.

The male worm passes three days in the egg, six and a half as a worm,
and metamorphoses into a fly on the twenty-fourth day after the egg is
laid.

Though the larvae of bees are apodal, they are not condemned to absolute
immobility in their cells; for they can move by a spiral motion. During
the first three days, this motion is so slow as scarcely to be
perceptible, but it afterwards becomes more evident. I have then
observed them perform two complete revolutions in an hour and three
quarters. When the p