The young bees break their envelope with their teeth, and, assisted at first by the working-bees, proceed to cleanse themselves from the moisture and exuviæ with which they were surrounded: this operation being completed, they begin to exercise their intended functions, and in a few minutes are gathering provision in the fields, loading "in life's first hour the hollow'd thigh." M. Maraldi assures us that he has "seen bees loaded with two large balls of wax, returning to the hive, the same day they became bees." "We have seen her," says Wildman, "the same day issue from the cell, and return from the fields loaded with wax, like the rest." The error of Maraldi and Wildman in using the term wax instead of pollen, does not at all affect the accuracy of their observations. As soon as the young insect has been licked clean and regaled with a little honey by its companions, the latter clean out the cell, preparatory to its being re-occupied by a new tenant or with honey. With respect to the cocoons spun by the different larvæ, both workers and drones spin _complete cocoons_, or inclose themselves on every side: royal larvæ construct only _imperfect cocoons_, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen; and Huber concludes, without any hesitation, that the final cause of their forming only incomplete cocoons is that they may thus be exposed to the mortal sting of the first hatched queen, whose instinct leads her instantly to seek the destruction of those who would soon become her rivals. If the royal larvæ spun complete cocoons, the stings of the queens regnant might be so entangled in their silken meshes, as to be with difficulty disengaged from them. "Such," says Huber, "is the _instinctive enmity of young queens to each other_, that I have seen one of them, immediately on its emergence from the cell, rush to those of its sisters, and tear to pieces even the imperfect larvæ."