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40 of the body politic. Little wonder is it that the brain of the worker bee is much larger than that of the queen or drone, for she needs must exercise her mental powers far more than either. She is obliged also to pass through certain industrial stages in her development as a worker before she attains the full height of citizenship.

The life-history of a worker is usually as follows: The cell in which she is developed is the smallest of the comb, such as is ordinarily used for storing honey. She is not merely a fatherless creation, like the big drone, but hatches from an impregnated egg during the fourth day after it is laid by the queen mother. She is supplied with royal jelly, presumably the same as that which nourishes the queen larva, for about three days; afterward she is fed honey and digested pollen. This food is placed in the bottom of the cell, and the young larva floats in it and absorbs it through the body walls as well as through the mouth, which a little later she opens up pleadingly that it may be filled by the nurse bees. She grows like other infantile insects by shedding her skeleton skin as fast as she outgrows it; she does this with thoroughness, for she sheds the lining of the mouth, the gullet, the larger intestines and the tracheal tubes as well as the outside, this being a very thorough change of clothes, indeed; she does this about six times. Soon after she hatches she querls up in the cell, floating in her food, and at the end of four days' feeding she is a very fat, contented youngster. Six days from the hatching the nurse