e brood comb, when I can see no good
reason why they should be so rebellious.

I shall here state some _conjectures_ which have occurred to me on this
subject. Is it absolutely certain that bees can raise a queen from _any_
egg or young larva which would produce a worker? Or if this is possible,
is it certain that _any kind of workers_ can accomplish this? Huber
ascertained to his own satisfaction that there were two kinds of workers
in a hive. He thus describes them.

"One of these is, in general, destined for the elaboration of wax, and
its size is considerably enlarged when full of honey; the other
immediately imparts what it has collected to its companions, its abdomen
undergoes no sensible change, or it retains only the honey necessary for
its own subsistence. The particular function of the bees of this kind is
to take care of the young, for they are not charged with provisioning
the hive. In opposition to the wax workers, we shall call them small
bees or nurses."

"Although the external difference be inconsiderable, this is not an
imaginary distinction. Anatomical observations prove that the capacity
of the stomach is not the same--experiments have ascertained that one of
the species cannot fulfil all the functions shared among the workers of
a hive. We painted those of each class with different colors, in order
to study their proceedings; and these were not interchanged. In another
experiment, after supplying a hive deprived of a queen with brood and
pollen, we saw the small bees quickly occupied in nutrition of the
larvae, while those of the wax working class neglected them. Small bees
also produce wax, but in a very inferior quantity to what is elaborated
by the real wax workers."

Now if these statements can be relied on, and thus far I have nearly
always found Huber's statements, where-ever I had an opportunity to test
them, to be most wonderfully reliable, then it may be that when bees
refuse to cluster on the brood comb and to proceed at once to rear a new
queen, it is because they find that some of the conditions necessary for
success are wanting. Either there may not be a sufficient number of
wax-workers, to enlarge the cells, or a sufficient number of nurses to
take charge of the larvae; or it may be that the cells contain only young
wax-workers which cannot be developed into queens, or only young
nurses, which may be in the same predicament.

If any of my readers imagine that the work of carefully