When the eggs have been laid, and the grubs hatched, the worker bees assume new duties--the feeding and tending of the young. They eat honey and pollen, which is partially digested, and supplied as pap to the grubs in such quantities that they seem bathed in it; but after a short time a mixture of honey pollen and water is substituted for this pap. It is said that the drone larvæ are fed with pap for a longer period than the workers; and the queen larva undoubtedly receives far more of this pap--or, perhaps, of a still richer nutritive product, sometimes spoken of as royal jelly--and, indeed, is supplied therewith throughout larval life. It is generally believed that this high feeding is the cause of queen-development, and that should the queen larvæ die ordinary worker larvæ are fed up, and produce queens nowise dissimilar to those developed in the royal cells. It is clear, if this be so, that the behaviour of the nurses decides the difference between the future queens and working bees--that is to say, the fertile and the sterile females. In any case, the feeding of the young by members of the same community is a fact to be specially noted. It is commonly said that the family is the germ from which the social community springs; and it may be added that food-collection or food-administration in some form makes the difference between the family that coheres and the family that scatters. When the larvæ have been fed, each after its kind, the workers seal up the cells with lids of pollen and wax; the larvæ spin cocoons, pass into the pupa stage, and then change to perfect bees, which bite a way through the lid and take their place in the hive. These young bees now become the nurses, while the older bees go abroad to fetch honey and pollen to be stored away in some of the cells. But when a queen emerges, her first act is to go round to the other royal cells, tear them open, and sting to death the helpless occupants. Meanwhile the old queen may have led off the surplus population in a swarm, and the new queen reigns in her stead. Idle drones have also been emerging from their cells; and when the young queen starts forth on her nuptial flight she is followed by the drones, mates with one of them, and returns a potential mother of thousands. So long as there is abundance of food the useless drones are tolerated; but when there is scarcity they are ejected, and drone eggs, larvæ, and pupæ are said to be destroyed.