In the stone Bumble-bee (_Bombus lapidarius_), a queen, who has passed the winter in blissful sleep, will lay the foundation for a new colony on some bright May morning by collecting a small quantity of moss. This done, she starts forth to gather pollen, with which, under cover of the moss, she forms a waxen cell, mixing the newly-gathered pollen with the wax so mysteriously formed within her body, as in the case of Hive-bees of the worker type. Slowly and laboriously this waxen cradle grows. Fashioned like a globe, its inner surface is lined with pollen soaked in honey, and with the last pellet of this a number of eggs are laid arid the nursery is sealed up. By the time these labours are completed the queen is worn out; she therefore rests awhile, clinging to the outer wall of this cunningly-wrought cradle. After a few days’ rest she adds another and commonly yet a third cell to the first, joining each to the other with wax. But before the third cradle is finished the eggs in the first have hatched. The youngsters will have consumed the layer of honey-soaked pollen placed there for this purpose. They therefore require feeding, and thus the labours of this very industrious queen are still further increased. Divining the needs of her imprisoned first-born, she bites a small hole through the nursery wall and pours in a quantity of honey for their sustenance. In due time they are “full-fed,” and each spins for itself a silken vestment wherein to undergo its transformation into a worker-bee. The careful mother, during this period of transition, now scrapes away an opening through which the young bees may creep when they awake. This event takes place in the course of a few days, when her work is materially lightened, for these newly-hatched workers at once take over the duties of building nurseries and feeding the further batches of young which, for a time, follow one another in quick succession. The queen, indeed, has now nothing else to do but to lay eggs in the nurseries as they are ready. So far all the children born to her are daughters. The earliest-born, it is to be noted, were “workers”; those which follow and are tended by the workers are also females, and supplement their mother’s labours by producing fertile eggs, though they have never even seen the male of their own species. Thus, if the queen-mother die her virgin daughters carry on the colony. But it sometimes happens that she may have left no descendants capable, for the time, of laying fertile eggs. In this case, if there be larvæ still in the nursery, the workers feed them assiduously as if in the hope that some may prove fertile. But if there be no infants to be fed they apparently abandon work, become despondent, and spend the greater part of their time sitting at home by the empty cradles, till at last death comes to their rescue and the colony is extinct.