Each queen, on her descent, departs a separate way, and hard is the road before her. She left the parental nest well-fed, and in good liking, her body well, stored with food in the shape of fat and the now useless, bulky, wing-muscles, and with this, her only dowry, she starts the formation of a new colony out of her own substance. Her first task is to form a burrow, and at the end of this she fashions a small chamber. This done, she closes the mouth of the burrow and cuts herself off from the world. The labour of this burrowing is so severe that it often wears away her teeth, her only tools, and the hairs from her body. In this retreat she now waits patiently for the eggs within her to ripen, which may take months to accomplish: she is still fasting, or, rather, feeding upon herself. When at last the eggs are laid and hatched, she feeds her children on saliva, the very juice of her body, for she is still fasting. Nor is the strain relaxed till the larvæ undergo their transformation into pupæ, and, after a brief sleep, emerge as “worker” Ants, puny in stature owing to the poorness of their food during larval life. In some species this fast may last for ten long months. So soon, however, as these little workers emerge, like dutiful daughters they make their way to the outer world, and go forth in search of food, which they share with their now exhausted mother. But, besides, they enlarge the original chamber, and drive galleries in all directions to provide accommodation for the vast population that is soon to crowd the thoroughfares. Meanwhile the queen resumes her task of producing more and yet more daughters, in whom she now displays not the slightest interest. Her elder children now bear away the eggs, and feed the young as they hatch. In course of time, as with the Bees, the task of wet-nurse falls on the youngest of the Ants, those who have just attained to anthood. For ten or fifteen years this queen-mother may continue her work of reproduction, a slave, indeed, to domesticity, with monotonous regularity, checked only by the chill of autumn and the sleep of winter.